White House Communications Center, Washington DC.
“Vladimir, this is Dubya. I have urgent news. General Abigor has just surrendered and defected.”
“That filthy Vlasovite bastard.”
“Sorry, Vladimir, you misunderstand, he’s a baldrick, he’s defecting to us.”
Without missing a beat, Putin carried on, “What I meant to say of course was that he is a heroic champion of freedom and liberty who has overcome his corrupt upbringing so that he can rally to the side of truth honor and justice.”
“That’s right Vladimir, he’s a filthy Vlasovite bastard, but he’s our filthy Vlasovite bastard.”
Chapter Thirty Two
Headquarters, Multi-National Force, Baghdad, Iraq
“Well, they’re human.”
“You have got to be kidding us. There’s no way those things are human.”
Dr Surlethe settled back in the conference room chair with every sign of comfort. That was one thing the higher ranks of the Army had down to a fine art, their conference rooms were well-furnished, air conditioned and had all the luxuries one might wish combined with hi-tech presentation equipment. It would be years before civilian releases caught up with the Army version of Microsoft Powerpoint. The Marines, now they were different, their “conference room” was usually a tent somewhere with a bare wood trestle table and a few camp chairs. One Marine General had remarked on the Army’s “excessive facility” only to be rather coldly told that ‘any damned fool can be uncomfortable’.
“Nevertheless, they are human. Sort of.” There was a stir of relaxation at the qualification.
“What do you mean Doctor?” General Petraeus needed to know a lot about these creatures, not least because he had almost a thousand of them in a Prisoner of War camp.
“General, we’ve looked at the DNA of the baldricks and its human.” Surlethe thought for a second. “Look at it this way, the difference in DNA between a chimpanzee and a human is around two percent. The difference between baldrick and human DNA is about one half of one percent. So baldricks are much more closely related to us than we are to chimpanzees.”
“They don’t look it.”
“No, they don’t General.” Again Surlethe thought for a moment. “Actually they do. If we ignore the way-out bits, the strange contortions and so on, they do look like us. We started off by thinking that they were a next-level up version of us that simply evolved differently but when the DNA comparisons came through we had to abandon that. There’s no doubt about it in our minds, we and the baldricks had a common ancestor somewhere way back when. The really big question is did that common ancestor evolve here on earth, on the hell-place or somewhere else?”
“I still find it hard to believe that something that’s so different from us could be related to us. DNA shifts and mutation rates can’t explain that level of difference.”
Protect us from intelligent, well-read generals Surlethe sighed quietly to himself, life had been much easier in the old days when Generals knew how to destroy armies and nothing else. Then, they just accepted everything a scientist said. Put on a long white coat and they were as good as gold. This one had an annoying habit of arguing with scientists and, even more annoying, was very often right. He quickly realized that it was about to get worse.
“I’ve been reading up on the Human Genome Project. According to their findings, the useless repetitive sequences, the junk DNA make up at least 50% of the human genome. According to the people working on that program, the junk DNA doesn’t have a direct function, but they reshape the genome by rearranging it, thereby creating entirely new genes or modifying and reshuffling existing genes. It also appears that something quite drastic happened around 50 million years ago that caused all our junk DNA.”
“That’s correct General. Our working hypothesis is that somehow we and the baldricks split away from each other way back then. We went our way, they went theirs. Perhaps we all came from somewhere else and the ‘something quite drastic’ was that we stayed here and they went to the hell-place. We each used different parts of our junk DNA and activated different strings. The difference may be only one half of one percent but it’s a very important one half of one percent. There’s more to it than that of course; it looks to us like the baldrick DNA itself has been corrupted, either by selective breeding, prion infection, both or something else.”
“So, how can you help me look after the prisoners we’ve acquired.”
“Well, we know from other sources that they are exclusive carnivores. Its probable that they’ll eat any sort of meat, they’ll eat in large quantities but at irregular intervals. Without need for major physical exercise, they’ll probably eat only once a week or so. Won’t be a pretty sight when they do though.” Surlethe thought back to the sight of the succubus eating and shuddered. “Medication might work on them, we’ll have to be careful and take it by stages. Oh, and General, their metabolic pathways are almost identical to ours. Chemical weapons should work on them just fine.”
The Ultimate Temple, Heaven
The archangel Michael strode forward into the Temple. All about him, the people sang; he could feel the ecstasy of the choirs of angels, of those few, fortunate saved humans. As he entered the Holiest of Holies, the thick marble of the temple walls drowned out the beautiful music outside; reduced to a dim glow, he focused his attention on the sight before him.
It awed him every time without fail: the great white throne, with its flashing lightning and pealing thunder surrounding the giant figure who sat on it, the One Above All Others. Before the throne were the seven great, gold lamps, burning their ceaseless incense so that the clouds of scented smoke hung thick and hazy, the smell clinging to everything. On one Michael loved it, the pomp and circumstance, the splendour all appealed on a very basic level, as they were supposed to. On another level, Michael-lan found them disturbing and slightly repulsive. There was something very unhealthy about the whole set-up and the mentality behind it. It betrayed a fundamental lack of balance.
At the four corners of the room stood the four living creatures, chanting their ceaseless cry: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come;” and the twenty-four members of the Private Choir. They were ancient even by the angels' standards, and were constantly on their faces before the throne, murmuring, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.' Time was, their voices had outstripped even the living creatures in volume, but even here they were not free from time's ravages. An astute observer might look closely into their eyes and see the misery and despair there. Singing the same praises for untold millennia was not as heavenly as it sounded.
Michael stopped in the middle of the lamps and knelt down on both knees, prostrating himself and pressing his flawless lips to the cold, dark jade floor. As though sensing intentions, the four living creatures quieted, and the twenty-four elders' murmurs died to whispers. From the white throne, the voice of Yahweh thundered: “Michael, my good general, what news do you bring me?”
'Oh nameless one, Lord and God of all, I prostrate myself to your presence. The messengers of Gabriel have returned, save one – Appoloin – who was killed in your service.' As he related the information, he couldn't help the quiver of surprise that crept into his voice; the idea that humans, of all things, could destroy demons or angels, let alone the merciless slaughter to which they had apparently subjected the demonic army, still confused him. If he were capable of admitting it to himself, he might even have said that the prospect scared him. But had he not seen for himself, on his visits to Earth just how far humans had advanced? So to be surprised at their lethal killing powers didn't make much sense at all.
'My Lord, the army the Morningstar sent forth has been utterly destroyed. The human magic has proved far beyond the capability of the fallen ones.'
Yahweh was silent for a moment, then spoke. 'Interesting. And what of the rest of Satan's hordes?”
'My Lord, the delegation you sent to Dis has not returned; it is several choirs overdue. It is not known if the messengers we sent have been received.'
'Is Uriel prepared to go out into the world?'
'He is, my Lord.”
