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Chapter 17

 

Cleo’ s Ruse and the Power of Blood

 

When Sacrificial  and not merely Slaughtered

 

Hu’s failure was not at first known to him. This gave the poor deluded dynamo of desire some help, for his future was to be far from his past. It was coming with the speed of light venturing into darkness; and in fact, it was the Light which would strike him with more force than any laser. But his moment of spurious glory was near, and he planned to take delivery promptly. The future could look after itself; I, he advised his waiting soul, will take care of the present.

 

In fact, he sang quietly to himself, a little ditty:

 

The power in which I stand invested

Is sure, but listlessly contested;

For in all the ways of wit and might

Hu has shown himself too bright

To bow before a hint of opposition -

Unfit for such a one, in his position.

 

It’s all myself and I have done it,

We together, we have won it,

Lonely in my mighty vigil

           Of power divine

I look on all,

And call it mine.

No hauteur spoils my active vision

Far fall my foes by swift excision.

 

While admitting to himself that the doggerel was hardly worthy of his talents, he could not help feeling it apt.

 

Yet his mind failed to warm as usual. Secret reports had reached him of some specious deal or other of Meredith, and this from one of his lunar employes, as he liked to call them, before the End, which he equally enjoyed calling The Last Lunar Disbanding,  to contrast with the first lunar landing. LLD! not quite the old LSD, abbreviated from the Latin, for pounds shillings and pence, nor yet the drug name, LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide. Perhaps Dr of Law and Letters, yes LLD, and Lunar Life Departure could be the subject of his … discourse.

 

The moon now ? Not such a big step for man, he reflected smugly, not really!  But what of his family ? This was always the inseparable problem that followed him like some pet retriever, but with less affection.

 

Cleo could have told him, but he did not know of her whereabouts, an incessant challenge to his sense of supremacy. In fact, Claude had been so effective with SCC 1’s commander, who was careful to suppress even his real name, but whom we shall style SCC #1, that he had convinced him that lunar power was THE power, and that in the interests of the earth’s future, he had to get rid of such biblical chaplains as Ralph and Harry, and that incredible sister of Harry’s. Thus, on reflection, and  knowing of Hu’s dislike of his own family, he had even dared to remove them all from the lunar surface.

 

It was not at all necessary to do this in a sanguinary way, but by agreement readily reached, since it no longer appeared possible for them to be productive on the moon. Thus all three having foreseen that mad violence would soon erupt, having counseled peace where it belonged, and not where it was illicitly longed for by passion without purity, knowing that Hu would counter their part in any conflict with their lunar commander, and feeling they had completed their testimony to those in this forbidden area (Psalm 115), were willing to be deported.

 

For this, they had undertaken to assume false identities and clothing, and had returned on the moon-to-earth craft, one before that of Hu’s envoy.

 

With them, by consent, had come six of those who had recently become Christians, who with them were now satisfied that the Earth was the proper and best focus of faith, and left with them! These had their own plans helped by SCC #1, since he was keen to be rid of them, without ridding them of their bodies; and as to Harry, Ralph and Margaret, their first pursuit, after extensive journeys to disguise their real intentions, was to find Cleo.

 

She was overjoyed at their success on the moon, the strength of their testimony and their safe return. However, for the Christian, safety is never the criterion, merely a mode within the requirements of duty, and with the aid of a sympathetic and to be frank, sacrificial editor, they soon publicised the real happenings on the moon, which had preceded its new role as tomb of arrogance and space centre of blood.

 

By his own methods, this led Hu quickly to Margaret’s lair, although of course she was no longer there. However his advance was considerable, since fresh tracks are far easier to follow.

 

The International Court of Equity eventually found them, but not where it was expected. They were happily leaving the offices of a newspaper not yet fully under control, and the screed emanating from that, which had already reached the streets in that hurried, harried time, exposed not only the duplicity and complicity of Hu and his staff, indeed of the whole Earth Unity Force, but contrasted ably and amply the Gospel, the Biblical depiction, showing the fulfilment of every prophecy to the uttermost even to the very day in which they lived. It was a masterly document and a virtual Nuremberg on Hu.

 

Fuming but not flummoxed, Hu breathed relief at this development. To be sure, there was an attack on him, but such developments were not rare, and surrounded by his fawning entourage, while supported by his captive kings, all in his service because of favours and hopes, he was looking forward in a drastic sort of a way, to the confrontations to come when he denounced these as tale-bearing liars.

 

There would certainly be a trial. One of his chief features was this: if the case was hopeless or perilous, or required innovative action, the latter was always to be chosen, and FAST. Don’t just sit there, he would charge himself:  if someone is seen with a revolver, then shoot first, hide behind a pillar: talk serenely, whatever the case required, but always act.

 

As to Cleo, he deemed it best to deal with his ‘sinning’ spawn before daring to touch a wife, which many still felt to be different, even revelatory of the nature of the husband, when there was conflict. He proceeded swiftly, but smoothly.

 

The giant doors of the imposing auditorium opened on the set day, and the case began.

 

Hu started with a denunciation that reminded some of their reading on USSR

‘trials’, where the only thing uncertain was how the victim would react to the previously assured sentence.

 

He exposed them as duplicitous, unreliable, sought with the help of his subverted envoy, to make a case for their being partly responsible for the devastation of the moon, and in rhetorical manner uttered this speech with brio, the words here virtually verbatim.

 

Despite my intense love of my people, and the needs of justice to these spiritual stragglers who, to be fair, may have been moved by a sense of frustration and concern at the necessary changes being wrought on this earth for our own survival, I feel there must be some mitigation in the sentence in this case.

My own sense of service to the World makes such a thought of mere condign justice to these offenders, to be as hideous as the mangled bodies of the brave soldiers of civilisation now lying slain on the surface of a dead orbiting body. The moon, like these appalling criminals, circles about the earth, but has no presence here.

I therefore move, in all humanity, indeed as if myself the very voice of humanity, not a death penalty by painful means, for that is simply a negative, but something different.

 

First, let there be an inscribing of their names in the Lists of the Inglorious, in the Hall of the Infamous.  With however the natural father’s heart with which I am so liberally endowed, I would urge merely their death by potassium cyanide, as befits spies for another cause, not by any more grotesque means.

Dare we sacrifice to slovenly senses of duty, to capricious fickleness, to unserviceable minds and disastrous criminals, a life for man ? Of course not, yet in preserving our lives, let us have theirs depart with some measure of dignity, at least as much as we can invent for them. Yet alas, with all humanity, such treachery to mankind as these represent, seen in its own terms, is befitting only rubbish.

 

Yet … when you remove rubbish, there is no need to make a mess!

 

The President of that august body did not see any need for any speech by those who had so well expressed themselves in print earlier,  that the world was still buzzing like angry bees with the news coverage of the Gospel and the denunciation of Hu. Indeed, it was this recent publication which was the cause célèbre and thus, with the Editor and top Newspaper Staff, they were summarily condemned.

 

Ralph asked for opportunity to speak, in honour, in equity, to clear their names, for truth’s sake.

What is truth ? asked the President.

 

Ralph quickly seized on this God-sent opportunity to reply to a question, and proceeded to answer it. His words are worth hearing.

 

 It is truth that you have slain the righteous and silenced the just,
 

¨      but God is not mocked and you will find that in the end, your present philosophic irrationality is mere emetic, and the world will vomit your ways to its surface as one most willing,

¨     and that God will judge righteously, as He has already done in placarding Jesus Christ the Saviour, whose blood is the only One that covers crimes like these,

¨      for those who repent.

 

Repent Mr President, he cried with a vigour which startled all and amazed not a few, and do not add your name to the list of the rebels against reality, to that of the haters of God. Many have been slain already, but have overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. That testimony has made their sacrifice sacred forever, not with the vainglory of pretence and human admiration, but with the unalterable force of unbowing truth, of Christian proclamation of peace in the name of Jesus, in the name of the word of God which demonstrably controls as it has controlled the path of history, and appoints it verifiably in advance.

 

Have you not read the Scriptures, Mr President, and seen its coverage of all these things, even those such as occur this very day in this courtroom!

 

 Do not imagine … Ralph managed to proceed as a temporary stunned shock struck the Court, 

 

Do not imagine, sir, that the asteroid of last month which soured a good fraction of this earth and its resources, is the last that will foul the waters of this globe, for there is a Star which will incinerate evil and evict wickedness and it will shine for ever, even the Son of Man.

 

As to Him, He is a Person not of mere humanity, but incarnate from God who has shown His face, only to have it mutilated by your wonderful world. Yet it is in that sacrifice that pardon is profound, and that from the God of truth and of justice, who settled accounts in love for faith. But it is not so for self-worship on the part of sinners, however big, sir, the congregation.

 

You ask what is truth, your Honour ? What CAN it be but the word of a knowledge which is filtered by nothing, polluted by nothing, limited by nothing, and above all, there to be knowable at all! And where else is this to be found but in the God who made limitations, having none Himself, the eternal necessity for anything to be over time, in time or for a time.

It is the word of this same God who by speaking gave you power of valid thought, and the world the power to be investigated by that same mind which you bear, and both the power to be seen together in intimate rationality, with the valid power to find Him as deduced by logical necessity. These things have often been shown in logical treatises. By this indubitable fact, never answered, always standing, the word of man by contrast is to be seen as like the grass in Summer, fine till it …

 

There had been a definite lull, for deep in the heart of the Court President there was something close to admiration for this peroration of Ralph, and he felt a certain restraint, close almost to reticence, to silencing someone so very near to being ... slain. He had given him his minute or two.

 

At this moment, however the proceedings were interrupted in a way no one whatever of the court personnel would have conceived, although to each of the prisoners, it was not entirely unexpected. It was of course all a matter of timing.

 

So much is and has been so. The timing of the return of the waters of the Red Sea was assuredly no less significant than that of their parting, for error on the one part could have drowned the Hebrews, and on the other, allowed the Egyptian pursuers to have escaped, leaving them free for their proto-Nazi slaughter, which however had to wait long before it came. To the Pharaoh, enslavement was allowed, but the price for that dominating ruler, seeking to recapture the retreating slaves, when God had demanded their release, and that in words underlined by the ten plagues, was high.

 

The decision of God to deliver the enslaved Jewish people in Egypt at that time was in fact in accord with His covenant with Abraham. He does not break His word: He did however break, per drowning, the power of Pharaoh. There came a vast tumult of dying Egyptians, drowned in their own sea.

 

But it was timing: the right time for the use of power is crucial.

 

The timing of the bullet which clips the ear but does not farewell the heart, may be a thousandth of a second. The timing of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, had it been four days after crucifixion, would have made a liar of God, which is impossible; and that is why it did not happen. Again,  a two day wait would have been as bad. If the paralysed man, told by Jesus Christ to arise, as in Mark 2, had been unable to do so for fifteen minutes, possibly Christ would have been torn limb from limb, as the mortal passion of the priests could then have counted on that of the people to add the violence of their frustration to the levitical lust.

But it was not so. God is a master of all things, timing not least.

 

Here also, then, it was a matter of time and timing.

 

There was not long to wait.