"No! "
"He die with honor." "Please, no! "
"He was believer. Your mother grieving but okay. She with small group about fifty miles west in mountains."
"And she is a believer too?" Ming asked through tears.
"Oh yes. Yes. I take you to her when time is right."
Chapter.
CHANG NEVER felt so isolated, so alone, as over the next five months. He grieved for his father but rejoiced that he was in heaven. He prayed for his mother and his sister, urging Ming to stay there and not try to bring the old woman out. It was, he knew, a horrible time to be in China, but escaping was more precarious.
Chang was intrigued by Ree Woo and helped Chloe arrange Co op flights and connections for him. But for the most part, Chang lay low, especially on the computers. Suhail Akbar had made it a personal quest to ferret out the mole in the palace. All employees were interrogated again and again, but Chang was certain he had
aroused no more suspicion than anyone else. He longed for the day when he could be as free to keep up with the Trib Force as he once had.
The day was likely over when he could pave the way for them with phony credentials. And he had to ask Buck to go easy with what he provided him from the palace for The Truth. It was one thing for Buck to write what he knew, but quite another to prove it with recordings and video feeds that could have come only from bugs in New Babylon itself.
Chang was thrilled that the dark of night relocations of the Trib Force had gone smoothly. So far they had lost no one since Steve Plank, who had never officially been part of the Force but was mourned as if he were.
Leah and Hannah were staying close to their new home in Long Grove. Their occasional missives about Lionel Whalum and his wife proved them to be the type of couple the Trib Force, and the Co op, needed.
Albie and Mac flew recklessly all over the world in aircraft Albie seemed to trade on a new black market. Chang worried that they didn"t have solid phony credentials anymore, but Mac, at least, seemed to feel invincible after the triumph in Greece.
Zeke, from what Chang could tell, flourished in a country environment the GC seemed to have forgotten. Many secret believers traveled for miles to be transformed by the young man with the master"s touch.
Word from Enoch and his charges from The Place was less encouraging. The group had been split up and parceled out to various underground homes, individuals, and families. Most of them were still active in trading via the Co op, but many despaired of ever having the kind of camaraderie they had enjoyed in Chicago.
That city had been devastated again, this time by the real thing a nuclear bomb that hit three days after Buck and Chloe and Kenny had rendezvoused with Sebastian and flown to San Diego. GCNN reported a thousand casualties, all Judah ites, but viewers realized that confirming the deaths or numbers would have jeopardized the very people who claimed the count.
Most thrilling to Chang was keeping up with Buck and Chloe and Kenny, who now lived literally underground in a bunker near San Diego. Sebastian and his family had smoothed the transition, and the secret church there seemed one of the most vibrant Chang knew of. There Kenny was just one of several babies born since the Rapture.
With the military technology still mostly intact, Buck was able to re create the setup he had enjoyed in Chicago, and he broadcast his cyberzine every few days. He had been careful to stay close to home but envied Rayford"s getting to live at Petra.
Now there was where the real action was.
Four Years into the Tribulation;
Six Months into the Great Tribulation
While the atmosphere was still festive and the daily messages from both Tsion and Chaim inspiring, Rayford would not say Petra was entirely coc.o.o.ned from the real world. The million there were reminded daily of the havoc wrought by Carpathia all over the globe. From everywhere came reports of miracles by thousands of deities who seemed loving, kind, inspiring, and dynamic. It was easy to watch them live on the internet, reattaching severed limbs, raising the dead, taking blood from the sea and turning it into water so pure and clear that many stepped forward to drink it without harm.
"False!" Ben Judah preached every day. "Charlatans. Fakers.
Deceivers. Yes, it is real power, but it is not the power of G.o.d!
It is the power of the enemy, the evil one. Do not be misled!"
But many were, it was plain.
Jews were mistreated, persecuted, tortured, and killed on every continent. They were paraded across the screen of the Global Community News Network and trumpedup charges leveled. They were traitors, commentators said, enemies of the risen potentate, would be usurpers of the throne of the living G.o.d.
Over the months, New Babylon"s policy on those found without the mark of loyalty changed from one that gave violators one last chance to have it applied immediately to one of zero tolerance.
There was no longer any excuse to have neglected one"s duty. Most barbaric to Rayford was the vigilante law that now allowed a loyal citizen with a valid mark to kill an unmarked resident on sight. The act was the opposite of a crime. It was lauded and rewarded, and all that was required was to deliver to a local GC facility the body of a victim who clearly bore no mark on forehead or hand.
Pity the citizen who was mistaken, however. The murder of a loyal Carpathianite was itself punishable by death, and trials were unheard of. If you could not produce an alibi against a charge of murdering a marked loyalist, you were dead within twenty four hours.
Rayford terribly missed his family and the other Trib Force members, but what was good for one was good for all. They had relocated and were staying put for a time. He knew it would not, could not, always be that way. He wanted so badly to get to San Diego, he could taste it.
The highlight of his day, beyond hearing the teaching and keeping up with the scattered Force, was the evangelistic message delivered every day by one of the two preachers. Had he been asked if he would enjoy a daily diet of preaching that laid out the plan of salvation and gave unbelievers the chance to receive Christ, he might have predicted it would wear thin.
But every day, day after day, Tsion insisted on either Chaim or himself delivering just such a message following the normal teaching for the majority who were already believers. And every day, Rayford found himself thrilled to hear it.
It wasn"t only because someone was saved every day and usually more than one. But also, the defiant ones and the undecideds often fell in anguish, battling, fighting G.o.d. Rayford marveled to watch the spiritual warfare as selfish, sinful men and women couldn"t evade the preaching and yet would not give in, even for their own benefit.
Every evening Chaim would ask new believers to identify themselves and talk about their old lives and their newfound faith. This gathering always culminated in singing, praying, and celebrating.
One night, still high from the meeting that spotlighted the new believers, Rayford was enjoying a lesson taught by Naomi, the young computer whiz. She was teaching anyone who wanted to learn how to access the various databases and get news from around the world.
Rayford was just one of several gathered to learn what they could, but he was summoned from the session by none other than Chaim himself, who wanted to introduce a new friend.
Rayford followed Chains a couple of hundred yards, and all along the way, people reached out to "Micah," blessing him, thanking him, telling him they were praying for him and appreciated his leadership. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," Chaim said, gripping hands and shoulders as he went. "Praise G.o.d. Bless the Lord. Blessings on you."
Finally they reached a clearing where several young people of different races and cultures sat chatting. They appeared to be in their late twenties or early thirties. "Ms. Rice?" Chaim said quietly, and when the short black woman excused herself, the others watched with interest as she joined Chaim and Rayford.
"I know you, don"t I?" Rayford said, bending to shake her hand.
"Don"t tell me. You"re a friend of no, you"ve been on television."
"Bernadette Rice," she said, with a clipped British accent and a gleaming smile. "Reporting from Petra, but no longer for the GCNN.". Rayford didn"t know what to say. So she was here on a.s.signment or not? or what? He smiled at her and glanced at Chaim. "I"ll let her tell you," Chaim said.
The three sat on rocks. "I was at the Temple Mount for GCNN the day that Micah, well, Dr. Rosenzweig, first emerged. I didn"t recognize him. None of us did. I don"t know what I would have thought had I known who he was. It was well known, of course, that he was the one who had a.s.sa.s.sinated Carpathia.
"But I was not even thinking of that when I was called to the scene. A woman, a GC Peacekeeping corporal named Riehl forgive me, but I remember everything and talk this way as a means of organizing my thoughts pulled me away from a story I was doing about families visiting the Temple Mount that day. To tell you the truth, I was none too pleased when she insisted that Rashid that was my cameraman and I wrap it up and come with her. I demanded to know what was going on.
"As she dragged me across the plaza, she said Rashid and I were about to get a rare privilege. A high ranking Morale Monitor was about to carry out an order from the potentate himself. When we got there, the tall young man, dressed as the MM do dressy casual, you know was standing with what looked to me like a frail, little old man. Forgive me, Dr. Rosenzweig, but that is my recollection.
"Well, sometimes non journalists have different ideas of how exciting a particular story is. I didn"t even know if they expected this to show live or if we were to record it. This MM gentleman just wanted to get on with it, so I asked central control who was producing the broadcast what I should do.
They wanted to know who the MM guy was, and before I knew it, he was insisting that we roll.
"He said he was Loren Hut, new head of the Morale Monitors, and that he had been ordered by Carpathia to execute this Micah person for refusing to take the mark and for resisting arrest. I do a fast lead in, Rashid focuses on the pair, and it goes live over GCNN.
"You"ll recall that everyone was starting to get the boils around this time, and Hut was suffering. He was wriggling and scratching and making me do the same just watching. Did you happen to see it, Captain Steele?"
"No, but I heard about it from my "
"Then you know what happened. Hut shot Micah several times from point blank range, and except for the deafening sound, the bullets had no impact. The crowd laughed and accused Hut of using blanks. He shot a man through the heart for saying that, proving he was using real bullets. The crowd dived for cover and I fell right to the ground, scared to death. Then Carpathia himself showed up. When I could compose myself at all, I crawled away toward the loyalty mark application lines, in case anyone was looking.
"But from there I went straight to my hotel. I was so glad I had not gotten around to accepting the mark yet. This man was an enemy of Carpathia"s, and he had some sort of supernatural protection I wanted. My superiors thought I was suffering from the boils like everyone else, but nothing was going to keep me from following Micah. I watched from my hotel room, learned about the meeting at Masada, disguised myself, went there, and came here as part of the airlift. Only recently did I finally pray for salvation."
"Praise G.o.d," Rayford said. "May I ask what took you so long? You were here when the bombs were dropped. You were protected by G.o.d though "
"Set afire."