Part 32 (1/2)

In April, Molly learned that she was pregnant.

67.

ON A WARM DAY IN JULY, IN HER FOURTH month with child, when school was in recess until September, Molly sat on her patio overlooking the sea, in the shade of a whispering phoenix palm.

On the gla.s.s-top table before her was one of her mother's books, which the world had forgotten even before the world had ended, but which she treasured and reread from time to time.

She had set the book aside after discovering a reference to Noah and the ark.

When Neil appeared with gla.s.ses of iced tea on a tray, she said, ”'The flood, the ark, the animals loaded two by two, all that Old Testament bulls.h.i.+t...'”

He raised an eyebrow.

”I'm quoting Render in the lavatory at the tavern. But Neil...besides sin and selfishness and stone idols and that sort of thing, does the story of Noah suggest any special reason that the world was wiped clean?”

Settling into a chair with his own gla.s.s of tea and a biography of W. B. Yeats, he said, ”In fact, yes. A tolerance of murder.”

She wasn't sure she understood.

”Most people had become too tolerant of murder,” he elaborated, ”punished it too lightly, even excused it when it was in the service of utopian visions. Why?”

”There's a reference in Mother's book.” She indicated the volume on the table. ”I was just wondering.”

He sipped his tea and lost himself in the life of Yeats.

For a time, Molly stared at the sea.

Hitler killed more than twenty million. Stalin fifty million. Mao Tse-tung as many as a hundred million. More recently, two million had been murdered in Sudan, another two million in Rwanda. The list of holocausts went on and on.

In the name of religion or political justice, in the pursuit of a better world through one ideology or another, ma.s.s graves had been filled, and who among the murderers had ever been punished, aside from a few n.a.z.is convicted at the Nuremberg trials more than half a century ago?

No clouds were gathered over the sea. Blue met blue at a nearly invisible horizon.

Every day in the old world, so recently vanished, the news had been full of stories of suicide bombers, street-gang shootings, men who killed their pregnant wives, mothers who drowned their children, teenagers who shot their cla.s.smates. She remembered reading once that the average time served for murder in the Old United States had been seven years.

Render had never seen a prison, only sanitariums with counselors and rose gardens.

The more she thought about these things, the more she realized that the children's psychological recovery and their reluctance to dwell on their ordeal was matched by the adults' strange disinterest in discussing the ETs. Why had they traveled thousands of light-years, murdered millions, begun to reinvent the earth, but then departed?

Surely this should be the primary subject of discussion for the next century. But as the children were under a welcome dispensation from grief, the adults-including Molly herself-seemed to have granted themselves a dispensation from reason and from curiosity, at least in regard to the end of the world.

Rather than interrupt Neil, she went into the house, found a thick book of famous quotations, and returned with it to the patio.

She remembered something that she'd heard on the speakerphone when Neil had been talking to his brother, Paulie, in Hawaii: ”-having great wrath because he knows that he hath but a short time.” Those words had come through amidst static when telephone service had begun to break down.

As her key word, she looked under wrath wrath in the index. She found the reference quickly. The quote was from in the index. She found the reference quickly. The quote was from Revelation, Revelation, chapter twelve, verse twelve: chapter twelve, verse twelve: Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea, for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

Come down down unto you? Was not h.e.l.l thought of as a place below? unto you? Was not h.e.l.l thought of as a place below?

In the bedroom of their house on that night in September, when Molly had awakened Neil from a nightmare, he had stood gazing at the ceiling, feeling the pa.s.sage of the leviathan for the first time, and had said, ”...sift you as wheat.” When she'd asked him what he meant, he hadn't remembered speaking those words.

Suspecting that this, too, was a quote, she spent a quarter of an hour with the fat volume on the table before her, and found the source. Luke, Luke, chapter twenty-two, verse thirty-one: chapter twenty-two, verse thirty-one: And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat.

Molly gazed at the sea.

When she picked up her gla.s.s of tea, she was surprised to find it empty. She didn't recall finis.h.i.+ng it.

She went into the house, got the pitcher from the refrigerator, returned to the patio, and poured more tea for herself and for Neil.

”Thanks, honey,” he said.

She remembered something the scar-faced psychopath had said in Bradley and Allison's house, regarding his intention to ”sacrifice” those children: ”Them that rule the world” wanted the children, the innocents, more than anyone, but ”kids ain't for sifting.”

Although the day was hot, a chill found her here in the shadow of the phoenix palm.

After a while, she said to Neil, ”I'm going to take a walk on the beach.”

”Want company?”

”Enjoy the biography. I'll be fine.”

Switchback stairs led down from the bluff to the beach. At the bottom, she took off her shoes and carried them.

The astrophysicists say there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth.

They say that our universe is one of many, perhaps one of an infinite number.

She walked on warm galaxies of sand, strolled across universes, stooped to pick up a sh.e.l.l: a small nautilus with a chamber that seemed to curve away to infinity.

They say G.o.d made the universe. The astrophysicists don't say it, but perhaps wiser men do.

They say that Heaven is another realm apart from this one, which might mean that it is another universe.

She scrunched dry sand between her toes. It was hot. She moved to the edge of the surf, where the sand was hard-packed and cool.

They say that certain arrogant angels rebelled, and that G.o.d threw them out of Heaven into h.e.l.l, which is a realm apart from both Heaven and Earth. Another universe?

She walked south along the beach, and the lapping surf washed her feet.