“The basic message is clear,” the president said. “This is a test of the faith of the US by God. What I’d like to ask is if anyone knows why.”
“Mr. President, I have to make an issue,” the Speaker of the House said. “I feel I must ask you to refrain from bringing deities into this discussion. It is a violation of the Constitution!”
“That is, in fact, your answer, sir,” Barbara said, calmly. “God is trying to find out if the US is a nation that will support the side of the holy in the Final Battle. If not, by giving us over to the Gar, which is more or less neutral and as much a threat to the infernal as to the holy, He takes the most powerful nation on earth out of play. Furthermore, the lesson of the Gar will not be lost on the rest of the world. It will increase faith in other lands. China is rapidly Christianizing. Their projected Christian population in fifty years exceeds our entire population. Those are warriors He can use in the Final Battle. That is our analysis. As best we can do, given that it is the ineffable mind of the Lord of Hosts.”
“This is insane,” the Senate Majority leader snapped. “I cannot believe we are even having this conversation!”
“You want insane?” Janea asked. “I got video of the Gar. Tell you what, you view twenty seconds of it and then we can have this meeting with your successor.”
“I won’t stand for being threatened!” the majority leader said.
“It’s not a threat,” Janea said. “If you really don’t believe that this is happening, then view the tape. It is either true that this is a…call it super-powerful entity, which we need divine intervention to fight, or it is not. If it is not, then you can view the tape with no problems. There’s nothing to fear. If, however, you cannot view the tape with no problems, if there is something to fear, then we need to get to that point now and get past the ‘I don’t believe this.’ Among other things, while we’re talking, the Gar is moving towards where I’m sitting, and I’d like to get the Hel out of Dodge. Like the White God, I am offering you a simple test. A poisonous one that I know you will fail, but an honest test. Let’s hope that He has more mercy than I.”
“To get back on the subject of this meeting,” the president said, clearing his throat. “There is an issue.”
“Praying to God for divine intervention?” the Speaker said. “You bet there’s an issue! You’ve got zero chance of being reelected if you do!”
“That is not the issue,” the President said. “And since everyone here has a security clearance and this conversation is Top Secret, it’s an issue that had better stay in this room. The issue is this. While I have attended many services over the years and while I…don the trappings of religion for various purposes, I am not, in fact, a believer. I will admit that the reports I was made privy to about Special Circumstances have swayed me more to the side of belief, but I am not the sort of believer, well, you are, Mrs. Everette. The question is, does that matter? Will God still grant us intercession?”
“God does not care for the kings and princes of the world,” Barb said. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. What He cares about is the essential faith of this nation.”
“I cannot believe this conversation,” the Speaker said. “This conversation cannot go on. My constituents will explode if we start having national prayer breakfasts!”
“Oh, for a way to pick it up and drop it on Market Street, then,” Barb snapped. “Get this through your head. In a few hours, the Gar will reach the town of Goin. Sometime tomorrow afternoon, it will reach the perimeter we’ve set up. Sometime tomorrow night, it will reach the outskirts of Knoxville. You can keep trying to keep people out of its way, it will eventually outrun you. It will convert worshippers, gather reproductive females to make Children, and feed. It will feed on humans, cats, dogs, cattle, anything that is brought to it. It will cast off Hunters to go forth and gather for it. It will create Children to make more Hunters. It will physically spread and its influence will spread. It will take first this region, then the state and North Georgia, Western North Carolina. It will spread its influence and spread its influence until, yes, there will be Hunters in Ghirardelli Square gathering resources to feed its essence. By then, we will have either crumbled as a nation or, my greatest fear, become a nation of its worshippers, feeding it an endless supply of largesse. Then with our power and might we will go forth in the Gar’s name and conquer the nations of this planet. Their food and thousands, millions of handmaidens will be sent to its essence and it will consume the world!”
“How big can this thing get?” the House Minority Leader asked.
“Who knows?” Janea answered. “The people who were feeding it before were hunter-gatherers, maybe they had horticulture and early animal husbandry but probably not, and it got as big as fifty elephants. That might be a round number meaning ‘it’s really fricking big,’ but it’s already bigger than that. There’s no indication that it has an upper limit. It is just The Stomach That Walks. My guess? With industrial food production and the fact that the US is a breadbasket with lots of cows, pretty fricking big. Like, big-as-a-city big. And millions of Hunters, thousands of Children. With enough support, billions of Hunters, millions of Children. We’re currently dealing with maybe a couple of thousand Hunters, and we can’t deal with them. Did the part about this not being the worst Great Old One get up to your level?”
“No,” the President said carefully.
“The gar gyi dbang phyug ma isn’t the worst of the Great Old Ones,” Janea said with a sigh. “There are only seven mentioned in the Tibetan texts, but there are references to there being many others. The Gar is one of the few who had real worshippers. Most of the rest didn’t seem to care one way or the other and were as mercurial and deadly as weather. They didn’t even seem to destroy for the joy of destruction, as many demons do. They just didn’t seem, in general, to notice humans.”
“How were they defeated?” the Senate Minority Leader asked.
“The gods,” Janea said, carefully. “Humans apparently…” She paused and looked at Barb.
“I can handle the E word,” Barb said with a smile.
“Humans apparently evolved with the Great Old Ones just being part of their world,” Janea said. “At some point they managed to get the gods to intercede. There was a big battle that was so far back it’s not even in most religious texts, and the gods won. Then they took the humans as their worshippers, and you get Odin and Zeus and all the rest eventually. The battle with the Titans might be a reference to the battles with the Old Ones.”
“So…why can’t the old gods intercede?” the Speaker asked. “That would…actually be a lot more palatable.”
“You want me to try to penetrate divine politics?” Janea asked. “I thought you were going nuts about there even being a God? Answer is, I dunno. I do know that they are not as powerful as the White God by a lot of orders of magnitude. They’re still there. Many, as those the Asatru worship, side with the White God. Mostly. Don’t ask me about Loki; it depends on the day. Others side with the infernal. But for whatever reason, they aren’t intervening. I couldn’t even get Freya to give me enough power to battle a Child. She was just hands off. I was nearly taken by a Hunter, one of her most powerful priestesses taken to be defiled, and she didn’t intervene. That tells me that they are held. At a guess, because of this test of the White God.”
“So God is hanging us out to dry?” the Senate Majority Leader asked. “Great!”
“No, He is testing us,” Barb said. “This is part of the test. Can you, the leaders of this great nation, get your heads around there being a One True God and can you lead your people in His direction or will we continue to… What was that book a while back? Will we continue to slouch towards Gomorrah? Can you lead or can you only run in front of wherever the band is headed? Because this is but a minor test. Much greater tests are coming. I think what God is saying, getting it down to a bumper-sticker, is ‘Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.’”
“The problem being that this is a democracy, Barbara,” the Speaker said, as if speaking to a child. “And in a democracy, that is under rule of law, we have to follow the laws. And the law says, no interaction between church and state.”
“Don’t argue with me, sweetheart,” Barbara said, smiling broadly and then pointing at the roof. “Argue with Him if you’d like. I do.”
“Is this unconstitutional?” the President asked.
“Yes!” the Speaker and the Majority Leader both snapped.
“I was asking the Chief Justice,” the President said.
“There are numerous precedents,” the Chief Justice said. “Presidents have often asked for national prayers. After 9/11, for example. But given the current makeup of the Court, if they were all brought in on the decision and prior decisions related to Special Circumstance, it would come down to…ideological position. Which means, probably, a five-four vote in favor. The problem being, we don’t have time to debate. Which brings in the other precedent, which is ‘the Constitution is a document, not a suicide pact.’ I won’t get into the debate about the meaning of ‘respecting an establishment of religion.’ We simply don’t have time.”
