Lucifer's Hammer

“Who are you?” Alim Nassor demanded.

“I am the Reverend Henry Armitage,” the man said. “A prophet. I know, I know. At the moment I do not look much like a prophet of God. But I am, just the same.”

Alim thought Armitage looked very much like a prophet, with his beard and white hair, and that long flowing raincoat, and glittering eyes.

“I know who you are, my brothers,” Armitage said. “I know what you have done, and I know it is not easy in your hearts. You have done all ma

“You’re crazy,” Hooker said.

“Am I?” Armitage chuckled. “Am I? Then you can listen for amusement. Surely a madman ca

Alim felt Jackie come up alongside him. “He’s good that one,” Jackie said. “Notice how he’s got the sisters listening? And us, too.”

Alim shrugged. There was a compelling quality about the man’s voice, and the way he kept shifting, from that preachy jive to just talk, that was good. Just when you thought he was nuts, he’d talk like anybody else.

“What is this mission God has for us?” Jackie called.

“The Hammer of God has fallen to destroy an evil world,” Armitage said. “An evil world. God gave us this Earth, and the fruits thereof, and we filled it with corruption. We divided mankind into nations, and within nations we divided men into rich and poor, black and white, and created ghettos for our brothers. ‘And if any man has this world’s goods and sees his brother in want, and shares not with his brother, that man hath no life.’ The Lord gave this world’s goods and those who had them knew Him not. They piled bricks upon bricks, they built their fancy houses and palaces, they covered the Earth with the belch and stink of their factories, until the Earth itself was a stench in the nostrils of God!”

“Amen,” someone shouted.

“And so His Hammer came to punish the wicked,” Armitage said. “It fell, and the wicked died.”

“We’re not dead,” Alim Nassor said.

“And yet you were wicked,” Armitage answered. “But we were all wicked, all of us! The Lord God Jehovah held us in the hollow of His hand. He judged us and found us wanting. And yet we live. Why? Why has He spared us?”

Alim was silent now. He wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t. This crazy old bastard! Nuts, truly cracked, but yet—

“He has spared us to do His work,” Armitage said. “To complete His work. I did not understand! In my pride I believed that I knew. In my pride I believed that I saw the Day of Judgment coming in the morning of the Hammer. And so it was, but not as I believed. The scripture says no man knoweth the day and the hour of Judgment! And yet we have been judged. I thought upon this, after the Hammer fell. I had thought to see the angels of the Lord come to this Earth, to see the King himself come in glory. Vain! Vain pride! But now I know the truth. He has spared me, He has spared you, to work His will, to complete His work, and only when that work is done shall He come in glory.

“Join me! Become angels of the Lord and do His work! For the pride of man knoweth no end. Even now, my brothers, even now there are those who would bring back the evils the Lord God has destroyed. There are those who will build those stinking factories again, yea, who will restore Babylon. But it shall not be, for the Lord has His angels, and you shall be among them! Join me.”

Alim poured whiskey into Hooker’s cup. “You believe any of that jive?” he asked. Outside the tent Henry Armitage was still preaching.

“He sure do have a voice,” Hooker said. “Two hours, and he ain’t slowin’ yet.”

“You believe?” Alim asked again.

Hooker shrugged. “Look, if I was a religious man — which I ain’t — I’d say he talkin’ sense. He do know his Bible.”

“Yeah.” Alim sipped whiskey. Angels of the Lord! He was no goddam angel, and he knew it. But the old son of a bitch kept twitching memories. Of storefront churches and prayer meetings, phrases that Alim heard when he was a kid. And it bothered him. Why the hell were they still alive? He leaned out the tent flap. “Jackie,” he called.

“Right.” Jackie came in and took a seat.

Jackie was all right. Jackie hadn’t had any problems with Chick for a long time. He’d found a white girl, and she seemed to like Jackie a lot, and Jackie was pretty sharp now.

“What about that preacher man?” Alim asked.

Jackie waved both hands. “He makin’ more sense than you think.”

“How’s that?” Hooker asked.

“Well, some ways he’s right,” Jackie said. “Cities. Rich people. Way they treated us. He’s not sayin’ anything the Panthers didn’t say. And dammit, that Hammer did end all that shit. We got the revolution, handed right to us, and what are we doin’? We sittin’ around doin’ nothin’, goin’ nowhere.”

“Shee-it, Jackie,” Alim said. “You lettin’ that hon — ” He bit the word off before Sergeant Hooker could react. ” — that white preacher get to you?”

“He is white,” Jackie said. “And I wouldn’t be the onliest one. You remember Jerry Owen?”

Alim frowned. “Yeah.”

“He out there. With the others that come with the preacher man.”

Sergeant Hooker grunted. “You mean that SLA cat?”

“Wasn’t SLA,” Jackie said. “Another outfit.”

“New Brotherhood Liberation Army,” Alim Nassor said.

“Yeah, all right,” Hooker said. “Called hisself a general… Hooker snorted contempt. He didn’t like people who gave themselves military titles they hadn’t earned. He was, by God, Sergeant Hooker, and he’d been a real sergeant in a real army.

“Where the hell he been?” Alim demanded. “FBI, every pig outfit in the country wanted him.”

Jackie shrugged. “Hidin’ out, not far from here, valley up near Porterville. Hid out with a hippie commune.”

“And now he’s with the preacher man?” Hooker demanded. “He believe that stuff?”

Jackie shrugged again. “He say he do. Course, he always was into environmentalism. Maybe he just thinks he’s found a good thing, ’cause the Reverend Henry Armitage has got hisself a big followin’ that do believe. A big followin’. And — he’s a white man, and he preaches that blood don’t matter, and those believers of his, they believe that too. You think about that, Sergeant Hooker. You think about that real good. I don’t know if Henry Armitage is the prophet of God or crazy as a hoot owl, but I tell you this, there ain’t going to be many big outfits left that’ll let us be leaders.”

“And Armitage—”

“Says you are the chief angel of the Lord,” Jackie said. “He say your sins are forgiven, you and all of us, we’re forgiven and we got to do God’s work, with you as Chief Angel.”

Sergeant Hooker stared at them, wondering if they were falling under the spell of that ranting preacher, wondering if the preacher meant what he was saying. Hooker had never been a superstitious man, but he knew Captain Hora used to take the chaplains seriously. So did some of the other officers, ones that Hooker had admired. And… dammit, Hooker thought, dammit, I don’t know where we’re going, and I don’t know what we ought to do, and I do wonder if there’s any reason for anything, if there’s a reason we stayed alive.

He thought of the people they’d killed and eaten, and thought there had to be a purpose to it all. There had to be a reason. Armitage said there was a reason, that it was all right, all the things they’d done to stay alive…

That was attractive. To think there’d been a purpose to it all.

“And he say I’m his chief angel?” Hooker demanded.

“Yeah, Sarge,” Jackie said. “Didn’t you listen to him?”

“Not really.” Hooker stood. “But I’m sure as hell going to listen to him now.”