Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [224]
"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