“I’ve thought it over. What else have I been telling you? Now please, Mule. Everything’s all set. Fassbander will explode completely if I don’t speak my curse into this mike in two minutes.”
Silently Mule Malloy started up the bleep.
“Why did I become ordained?” Acosta backtracked. “That’s no question really. The question is why have I remained in a profession to which I am so little suited. I will confess to you, Mule, and to you only, that I have not the spiritual humility and patience that I might desire. I itch for something beyond the humdrum problems of a congregation or an army detachment. Sometimes I have felt that I should drop everything else and concentrate on my psi faculties, that they might lead me to this goal I seek without understanding. But they are too erratic. I know the law, I love the ritual, but I am not good as a rabbi, a teacher, because . . .”
For the third time the bleep stopped, and Mule Malloy said, “Because you are a saint.”
And before Chaim Acosta could protest, he went on, “Or a prophet, if you want Fassbander’s distinction. There are all kinds of saints and prophets. There are the gentle, humble, patient ones like Francis of Assisi and Job and Ruth—or do you count women? And there are God’s firebrands, the ones of fierce intellect and dreadful determination, who shake the history of God’s elect, the saints who have reached through sin to salvation with a confident power that is the reverse of the pride of the Lucifer, cast from the same ringing metal.”
“Mule . . . !” Acosta protested. “This isn’t you. These aren’t your words. And you didn’t learn these in parochial school . . .”
Malloy seemed not to hear him. “Paul, Thomas More, Catherine of Siena, Augustine,” he recited in rich cadence. “Elijah, Ezekiel, Judas Maccabeus, Moses, David . . . You are a prophet, Chaim. Forget the rationalizing double talk of the Rhinists and recognize whence your powers come, how you were guided to save me, what the ‘strange thoughts’ were that you had during last night’s vigil of prayer. You are a prophet—and you are not going to curse men, the children of God.”
Abruptly Malloy slumped forward over the wheel. There was silence in the bleep. Chaim Acosta stared at his hands as if he knew no gesture for this situation.
“Gentlemen!” Captain Fassbander’s voice was even more rasping than usual over the telecom. “Will you please get the blessed lead out and get up that rise? It’s two minutes, twenty seconds, past zero!”
Automatically Acosta depressed the switch and said, “Right away, Captain.” Mule Malloy stirred and opened his eyes. “Was that Fassbander?”
“Yes . . . But there’s no hurry, Mule. I can’t understand it. What made you . . . ?”
“I don’t understand it, either. Never passed out like that before. Doctor used to say that head injury in the Wisconsin game might—but after thirty years . . .” Chaim Acosta sighed. “You sound like my Mule again. But before . . .”
“Why? Did I say something? Seems to me like there was something important I wanted to say to you.”
“I wonder what they’d say at Tel Aviv. Telepathic communication of subconscious minds? Externalization of thoughts that I was afraid to acknowledge consciously? Yes, you said something, Mule; and I was as astonished as Balaam when his ass spoke to him on his journey to . . . Mule!”
Acosta’s eyes were blackly alight as never before, and his hands flickered eagerly. “Mule, do you remember the story of Balaam? It’s in the fourth book of Moses . . .”
“Numbers? All I remember is he had a talking ass. I suppose there’s a pun on Mule?”
“Balaam, son of Beor,” said the rabbi with quiet intensity, “was a prophet in Moab. The Israelites were invading Moab, and King Balak ordered Balaam to curse them. His ass not only spoke to him; more important, it halted and refused to budge on the journey until Balaam had listened to a message from the Lord . . .
“You were right, Mule. Whether you remember what you said or not, whether your description of me was God’s truth or the telepathic projection of my own ego, you were right in one thing: These invaders are men, by all the standards that we debated yesterday. Moreover they are men suited to Mars; our patrol reported them as naked and unprotected in this cold and this atmosphere. I wonder if they have scouted this planet before and selected it as suitable; that could have been some observation device left by them that trapped you in the pass, since we’ve never found traces of an earlier Martian civilization.
“Mars is not for us. We cannot live here normally; our scientific researches have proved fruitless; and we maintain an inert, bored garrison only because our planetary ego cannot face facts and surrender the symbol of our ‘conquest of space.’ These other men can live here, perhaps fruitfully, to the glory of God and eventually to the good of our own world as well, as two suitably populated planets come to know each other. You were right; I cannot curse men.”
“GENTLEMEN!”
Deftly Acosta reached down and switched off the telecom. “You agree, Mule?”
“I . . . I . . . I guess I drive back now, Chaim?”
“Of course not. Do you think I want to face Fassbander now? You drive on. At once. Up to the top of the rise. Or haven’t you yet remembered the rest of the story of Balaam? He didn’t stop at refusing to curse his fellow children of God. Not Balaam.
“He blessed them.”
Mule Malloy had remembered that. He had remembered more, too. The phonograph needle had coursed through the grooves of Bible study on up to the thirty-first chapter of Numbers with its brief epilog to the story of Balaam:
So Moses ordered a muster of men sufficient to ivreak the Lord’s vengeance on the Midianites. . . .
