'Obviously, we do.'
''And I heard a voice from heaven,'' Garth intoned as his own memories were stirred, ' 'as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder.''
'Why were you sent here?'
'That was not revealed to us, Reverend,' I said, then quoted some more Scripture. ''And they sung a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts and the elders, and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty-four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.' We're two of the four beasts, Reverend; we represent Father's truth. You have been chosen to receive us. Will you hear our lesson, or is Father to send us somewhere else?'
'What is your lesson?'
'We must wait until it is revealed to us; or Father may wish us to discover it for ourselves. I think we should reason together. Don't you agree, Billy?'
'I certainly do, Boris,' Garth said, giving me a pat of encouragement on the leg. 'Reverend, you'd do well to listen to my brother. I think you should take that phone off the hook so there'll be no interruptions, and then we should try to work this out.'
Reverend Ezra slumped forward in his chair, rested his head in his hands, and kneaded his temples with the ends of his long, bony fingers. He didn't take the phone off the hook. 'It doesn't make sense,' he said at last.
'What doesn't make sense?' Garth asked.
The Reverend slowly put his hands down on the desk, fixed his gaze on me. 'That Father should mark two men to send us a lesson, and that one of those men would be a dwarf.'
'What the he-uh, what do you have against dwarfs?'
'The choice of a dwarf would seem to mock everything Father has promised and taught us. The Great Time is very near at hand. Satan knows this, and it is to be expected that his armies are on the march. How can I be certain that the two of you weren't sent here by Satan?'
'Father would prevent it,' Garth said with a broad gesture of dismissal. 'If we were servants of Satan, Father would strike us dead.'
Reverend Ezra thought about it, shook his head. 'Father may have marked your bodies to show that you serve Satan, then sent you to us as a challenge to see if we are worthy of His trust and teachings. If that's true, and we accept you into our family, none of us will live to see the Great Time. I need guidance.'
'Who gives you guidance?' I asked. 'Father?'
'Of course,' the Reverend answered in a somewhat distant tone. 'But Father is not always of this world. Now I must rely on the son… and the son is not Father.'
Beside me, I felt Garth tense with excitement. I sat up straighter, concentrated on keeping my face impassive and my voice even. The Reverend's words seemed to suggest that it would be Siegfried Loge, not Siegmund, who would be on the other end of the line if the phone rang. If so, it would confirm a link between Project Valhalla and the communes of Siegmund Loge-a link that, up to now, only Lippitt had been absolutely convinced of.
'Where is the son?' I ventured.
The question seemed to echo in the prolonged silence that followed. One question. If the Reverend answered it, he could stop worrying about his phone call; he'd be taking a nap while Garth and I were taking our leave.
'Don't you know?' Reverend Ezra was no longer making much of an effort to hide his suspicion.
'It was Father who appeared to us,' I replied, 'not the son.'
Suddenly the telephone rang, startling all three of us. The Reverend snatched up the receiver.
'Yes?' Reverend Ezra said, his voice nervous and high-pitched.
Garth, with disarming casualness, inched forward to the edge of the sofa and planted both feet firmly on the floor; at the first sign of distress on the part of the Reverend, the man would be even more distressed to find Garth's hands wrapped around his throat. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the front door, which had been left partially ajar. Given the element of surprise, I was confident that I could take out one of the big guards quickly and silently; taking out both of them, without raising a ruckus that could summon Mike Leviticus and his gun, was a problem of considerably greater magnitude.
Fortunately, the problem appeared to become academic when the Reverend hung up the phone and did nothing more than absently stare at the receiver. His expression displayed no signs of fear or alarm-only disappointment.
'So, what does Siegfried Loge have to say?' Garth asked in a flat tone as he leaned back in the sofa and crossed his legs.
'He's unavailable,' the Reverend mumbled with obvious distaste.
'For how long?'
'They won't say.'
'Why is he unavailable?'
'I don't like to even imagine. There are rumors about that place- ' Suddenly the Reverend's head came up, and he looked startled. 'How do you know of Dr. Loge, Brother Billy?'
'The vision,' Brother Boris answered. Garth had always been the more patient of the two of us, and Brother Boris was starting to get pissed. Somewhere under Reverend Ezra's frizzy curls was an address or a telephone number that could save Garth's and my life, and I had a growing urge to start banging the man's head on the desk top, or against a wall behind one of the two closed doors, to see what answers might drop out. 'Father told us
'If Father didn't tell you, I don't think I should.'
'Father forgot. He's got a lot of things on his mind these days, and everybody knows how distracting appearing to people in visions can be.'
'Father never forgets anything,' Garth interrupted quickly. 'It's Brother Boris whose mind occasionally gets muddled these days; it's the remembered ecstasy of the vision. However, Father did say that you would tell us anything we wanted to know, Reverend.'
Again, there was a prolonged silence while the Reverend pondered whatever it was he was pondering. Now fear moved across his face-but I somehow sensed that it was not fear of us. 'I don't understand why you want to know about Dr. Loge,' he said at last. 'He's not a member of our family. He is of… them.'
'Who?' Garth asked carefully.
'Warriors of Father. Dr. Loge leads them.'
'Men like Mike Leviticus?'
Reverend Ezra nodded. 'Mike is a Warrior, but he is also a member of our family. That's why he was assigned to guard us.'
'If Siegfried Loge doesn't have anything to do with your-our-family, why do you have to check with him?'
'Dr. Loge is our… supervisor. Father has told us that we must follow His son's instructions.'
'Father marked us, Reverend,' I said softly. 'We are Father's emissaries, so you have nothing to hide from us. Where did that telephone call come from?'
'I… I just can't tell you, Brother Boris. Not without permission.'
'Really? In that case, maybe it's time for Brother Billy and myself to do some marking of our- '
Instantly, Garth was on his feet and pulling me to mine by the collar of my robe. 'Don't pay any attention to Brother Boris, Reverend; he hasn't had his supper, and he gets cranky. Uh, would it be possible for us to meet some of the others while you wait for your phone call? We're anxious to meet the people who will be our companions in the Great Time.'
The Reverend thought about it as he fiddled with the telephone receiver, then finally nodded his head. 'There's a Halloween party in the commons building, and I guess there's no harm in your waiting there. Brother Amos and Brother Joshua will show you the way.'
'Maybe we should have jumped him, Mongo,' Garth said in a low, uncertain voice as we followed the two hulking Children of Father along a narrow path on the edge of a cliff overlooking Lake Superior. 'I'm starting to have second thoughts.'
'Don't. You were right. With these two waiting outside, it would have been too risky. I wonder why he's
