Vatican Abdicator Page 14
“Huh,” the Khalif grunts in agreement, “perhaps I have seen… or felt, even… what you mean. I always felt… how should I put it? Unclean. I always felt unclean, somehow, after meeting with him. And he had some sort of… unnatural hold over Al Salid… which was evident.”
“I’d like to fill you in on more you should know about Dolomay and the situation in general,” BC
tells him. “Will you join us in our war council? We’re going to meet on the Moon, at Lunar Prime.”
“Send me the coordinates and I will be there. Send them to my ship,” the Khalif demands.
“To your ship?” BC asks, surprised. “What… you’re in one of the fighters?” BC scans the screens in front of him, looking for the UIN ships, wondering which one the new Khalif is on.
“Absolutely!” the Khalif responds. “How could I ask anyone else to do what I would not?”
“I like you already,” BC tells the Khalif over the com.
“I will see you on the Moon, then,” the Khalif says, and he signs off.
“Send him the coordinates,” BC says. “And let’s get ourselves coordinated and get back there, too.”
Chapter Twelve
BC and the remaining UTZ and Project ships return to the Moon. Governor Erskine meets BC at the Lunar Prime port.
“Was it Dolomay?” she asks.
“It was. We beat him up pretty good.”
“He’s on quite a rampage.”
“He should be done for now. We took out four of his ships.”
“Good news, I guess,” the governor says to BC. “Too bad you couldn’t go five for five.”
“We tried, believe me. We did manage to talk to Mars’ new Khalif. I invited him to meet with us in our war council.”
“That I knew,” she tells him. “The ‘Khalif of the Universal Islamic Nation’ just called ahead to arrange for lodgings during his upcoming visit. He’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Good!” BC says, smiling. “Can you set up a place we can meet?”
“Will do.”
“Could your people call M’Be… the Pope? Let him know we’re meeting?”
Erskine give BC a “don’t push it” look, but then says, “Sure, we’ll call him. Go ahead, get some rest.”
Governor Erskine leaves BC to find his way to his lodgings to rest his weary bones after a busy thirty-six hour day.
Her call is his wake up call the next morning.
“Did I wake you?” she asks.
“Don’t worry about it. What is it?”
“The Khalif has arrived. He’s ready and waiting to talk to you, BC.”
“Excellent!” BC responds. “Did you set us up a meeting room somewhere?” he asks Erskine.
“Just you and the Khalif?’ she asks.
“I’d like to get the whole war council together, much as we can” he tells her. “Most of what I need to fill the Khalif in on you’ve all heard before, but I want him to feel like he’s a part of something bigger. Because this is bigger. He needs to know that it’s more than just him and me.”
“We’ll meet in the main hall, then,” she informs him. “In one hour?”
“Sounds good.”
BC, the Khalif, Governor Erskine, Anita Capituna, Krish and Dell convene their conference in the main hall of Lunar Prime, scene of many past conferences and failed attempts at reconciling the disparate members of the human race.
Of course, I played a part in helping those proceedings fail, at least once. Makes me wonder where we’d all be if I’d never assassinated Meredith McEntyre…
BC smiles at the Khalif across the table from him as he reflects upon his own guilt in delaying the peace process.
“So…” the Khalif begins. “This Dolomé… he is not human, you say?”
“Dolomay is an alien, no matter what he looks like,” BC tells the Khalif. “No matter what he said while he was among your people. Dolomay has no concept of brotherhood, camaraderie, religion…” BC
searches for the right words. “He looks like us, but he is truly alien. Without empathy. His people were sociopathic. No capacity to love, no ability to see the greater good, the larger whole… no insight beyond the obvious.”
“Huh,” the Khalif responds, taking it all in. “Then… how does he get people to follow him? I have seen it firsthand… people follow him like slaves!”
Let’s see if the Khalif is open minded enough to take this in…
“Dolomay uses his mind
to warp their wills. I would guess that’s why he made you feel ‘unclean’, Khalif. That is what I meant by powers and abilities beyond our own. He’s a very powerful telepath. He can twist the minds of men so they follow him, so they love his violence without limits. He takes men back to their animal selves, encourages that animal abandon. He makes them love him… though he has no love for them.” BC laughs an ironic laugh.
“He would kill any of his followers in an instant, or allow them to be sacrificed if it was to his gain, or guaranteed his own safety or satisfaction. Yet they still follow him… A brutal bunch of animal humanity.”
The Khalif steeples his hands in front of his face as he listens and thinks.
“No capacity for love,” he repeats after a time. “This makes him very dangerous, does it not?”
“Yes, it does,” BC agrees. “He doesn’t seem to feel any connection to his fellow beings.”
This young Khalif is a little bit sharper than Al Salid…
“Dolomay is an interstellar sociopath, as so many of his kind supposedly were,” BC tells him.
“His kind?” the Khalif asks.
BC tells the Khalif of the Ancient Enemy. He fills the UIN leader in on all the knowledge BC has of the Eldred, the Flaze and Domo, and the Ancient Enemy.
The Khalif closes his eyes and shakes his head as BC finishes. “How do we fight one so ruthless?” the Khalif asks, wondering aloud.
“Is that just a rhetorical question?” BC asks him with a challenge in his voice. The Khalif is taken aback at first, but then he smiles.
“So… the question does not need to be rhetorical?” he asks with deep interest.
“I don’t think it does,” BC says. “We can stop him and his followers… if we work together. If we are willing to bring ourselves together as a united force.”
M’Bekke, having been summoned up from Earth by BC, enters the conference room.
“M’Bekke!” BC begins as he stands to greet the new arrival. He corrects himself. “Your holiness. John Paul the Fourth. Welcome. Your timing is impeccable!”
“Why, thank you, BC,” M’Bekke answers as he shakes BC’s extended hand. “I cannot stay long, but they told me you said this was important, so here I am.” M’Bekke looks around the table, a brief expression of surprise crossing his face when he reaches the Khalif.
“M’Bek… John Paul, sorry… may I present the new religious leader of the UIN, his holiness the Khalif?” BC introduces the two men. “John Paul, tell me, can the New catholic Church coexist peacefully with Islam?” BC asks.
“I believe we can,” M’Bekke says cautiously.
“Can Islam coexist peacefully with the New catholic Church?” BC asks the Khalif. Again, the Khalif steeples his fingers in front of his face as he loses himself in thought. He doesn’t immediately answer. M’Bekke sits down at the table.
“Khalif?” BC prods him.
“The Prophet spoke of the other people of ‘the Book’,” the Khalif says, “speaking of both Christians and Jews. It is sometimes… ‘forgotten’… that the Prophet spoke of the other people of the Book as worthy of our love and respect,” he says slowly, deliberately, carefully weighing his words before he speaks. “I do not believe that our differences are as great as we would make them.” The Khalif brings his hands down from his face, laying them palms down on the table. “It is a lesson learned at a very high price,” he says somberly. “And yet, until the other aliens arrived, until your recent ‘press conference’, you told the people on Earth that Dolom�
� is UIN… why? This makes your people hate my people!”
“Well,” BC begins, thinking frantically on his feet as he tries to answer the Khalif diplomatically,
“He was UIN. We didn’t tell our people anything. We have not labeled him UIN…”
“Your media does,” the Khalif corrects him.
“Indeed, they do,” BC admits, “But not because we tell them to. They report what they see. We haven’t tried to make him out to be UIN. He was UIN. I’m not sure that they believe us when we tell them that Dolomay is an alien, the ‘Ancient Enemy’ returned. But I have tried to make that clear, even during the press conference with the Domo and the Flaze you mentioned earlier. Did you not hear?”
“Yes, although some news reports continue to label him UIN,” the Khalif contends again.
“Your working with us will stop that,” Anita interjects. The Khalif looks at her strangely, but he nods.
“No matter, now. We can no longer afford to be enemies. We no longer have that luxury,” the Khalif agrees.
“You’re right. We don’t have the luxury of fighting amongst ourselves,” BC says. “Not anymore. Because not only do we face Dolomay, we also face the Eldred. They’ve been responsible for the plague, and more attacks.”
The Khalif waves away the mention of the Eldred. “Of course, we know of the Eldred. The Kaliknaga, Ibn Al-Dolomé called them. They have attacked Mars repeatedly.”
“You can thank Dolomay for that,” BC says. “But just as he tries to keep humanity divided, we can try to help to unite humanity. Bring us all together, no matter what we look like or what we believe.”
“You are an optimist, Bernard Campion,” the Khalif says to him.
“I’m a realist,” BC disagrees. “The only realistic hope we have of defeating our enemies lies in a united human race.”
BC has a brainstorm. Another crazy idea occurs to him.
Well, this should make M’Bekke’s trip up here worthwhile.
“I want to propose something radical,” he tells the two holy men.
M’Bekke has been listening and taking it all in. He looks intently at BC. The Khalif glances from BC to the Pope and then back to BC.
“BC? I know you too well,” M’Bekke, Pope John Paul the Fourth, says with some humor.
“What are you thinking? How ‘united’ do you think humanity need be? What is it that you have in mind?”
M’Bekke can tell I’m looking for more. Well, here goes nothing…
“Yes,” the Khalif says. “What is the question you are not yet asking?”
“Well,” BC starts. But he pauses before he continues, unsure of how to say what he wants to say, and unsure of the receptiveness of his audience. “What I’m about to propose is so radical that you two may shoot me down immediately.”
“Go on,” M’Bekke encourages him.
“Yes, please, go on,” the Khalif agrees.
“Could we… can we possibly… unify our religions? Unite Christianity and Islam?”
M’Bekke and the Khalif are struck dumb by BC’s bold idea. Both stare back at BC in silence.
“I did not see that coming,” Krish chimes in.
“What? What are you thinking, BC? Did you call me up here under false pretenses?” M’Bekke challenges him.
“This is not what I expected either,” The Khalif says as he shakes his head.
“I know, it just occurred to me, but hear me out,” BC tells them. “We, all of us here, are the leaders of our people… as scary as that prospect might be.”
“Yes, it is scary that we are being led by a madman!” M’Bekke says in disbelief.
“Our numbers have dwindled since the plague, and the attacks on Mars,” BC says. “Shouldn’t it be easier to find some common ground?”
“When the number of followers drops in any religion, the remaining believers tend to grow more extreme, not more open,” the Khalif observes. “I do not think your logic holds,” he tells BC.
“But… can’t we start with the fact that you believe in the same God? You do, don’t you? I mean
‘Allah’, ‘Yahweh’, ‘Jehovah’; it’s the same God under different names, isn’t it?” BC asks them. Neither M’Bekke, nor the Khalif answers BC. Each shifts uneasily in his seat, hoping the other comments first. BC decides to plow ahead on this sudden brainstorm.
“Why can’t we put it out there?” he asks. “Allah is the Christian God, is Yahweh, is the Jewish God, and Vice Versa; Jesus and Mohammed were both gifted teachers of God…” BC leaves the thought hanging open.
“Perhaps something along these lines could be done. But we should not go too !” the Khalif cautions.
“I don’t know,” M’Bekke says cautiously, acting every inch as Pope John Paul the Fourth.
“Islam does not recognize the Trinity. Jesus is no part of Allah, but he is a third of our God.”
“Ah,” the Khalif says. He leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers in front of his face, but his sneer is still evident. “There it is. The simple arrogance of the Christians. What made me think this was going to work? How far are they willing to go?
“Gentlemen!” BC interrupts before M’Bekke can answer. “Could I back this up? Please?
There’s got to be some common ground here. Has to be. Khalif, if Mohammed taught respect for the people of ‘The Book’, then isn’t Allah Yahweh?”
“Some teachers say yes, some no. Others are unsure.”
“And M’Bekke, Yahweh is the God of Jesus Christ, isn’t he?”
“Huh, why, of course he is, BC!” M’Bekke answers. He again grows cautious. “Why do you ask?”
“The Jews who believe in Yahweh do not believe that Jesus is a part of him, one-third of God, either. Do they?”
“No, of course not.”
“And you have no quarrel with the Jews, correct? Their God is your God?”
“Yes,” M’Bekke nods. “I see your point. But that does not mean this will be an easy thing. The NcC itself is still very young. People don’t like their religion to keep changing on them. Makes them very grumpy.”
“Quite a concession,” the Khalif comments. “Much nicer than the Evangelicals who used to accuse us of worshipping ‘Jubal, the Moon God’.”
“See?” BC says hopefully, “We’re getting somewhere!”
“Mm-hmm,” M’Bekke agrees tentatively.
“But where are we going?” the Khalif challenges BC.
“How about this?” BC continues. “We put out a new holy book, a joint religious book made up of parts of the Bible, the Koran, and other writings…”
“No way! You are crazy.” M’Bekke protests immediately.
“Out of the question!” the Khalif says simultaneously.
“Wait!” BC stops them, “Hear me out! This isn’t a book to replace anyone’s holy book! What I’m proposing is a book in addition to those you already hold sacred. A book we can give to alien races when they ask us, ‘What do you humans believe?’ A book welcome in every church, synagogue, temple, mosque, approved by every faith as an expression of what we, as humans, believe.”
“That’s still a very tall order,” M’Bekke tells him. “What would you put in it?”
“Yes, what ‘parts’ of the Koran would you include?” the Khalif asks pointedly. BC smiles. “I have no idea.”
“What?”
“Huh?”
“I’m certainly not qualified to decide!” BC says, and he laughs. “Let your theologians duke it out!
Give them something to keep them busy. Get them talking to each other, instead of labeling each other monsters.”
The two men shake their heads.
“Maybe it can’t be done,” BC admits. “But we should at least set the process in motion… as a grand gesture of reconciliation!”
The Khalif and M’Bekke stare at BC in disbelief.
“You are truly insane, BC,” M’Bekke says.
“I don’t know,” the Khalif says, still thinking about BC’s proposal.
“But…” the Khalif begins to speak, but stops himself.
“I really don’t think we can do this, BC,” M’Bekke says. “In all seriousness.”
“M’Bekke, even if we can’t, we still have to try, don’t we? Khalif?”
“Yes?”
“Are you willing to try?”
He pauses a moment, and then speaks.
“I am.”
Really?!
“Great! So, then, M’Bekke, Pope John Paul… why not? Let’s at least give it a try.”
“I’ll… we’ll see. I’ll see if I can set the wheels in motion,” M’Bekke answers.
“Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but I’ll take it,” BC says. “It’s better than a ‘no!’… can I make an announcement? Some kind of public statement?”
“Well, I don’t know about tha…” M’Bekke begins protesting.
“Yes,” the Khalif says.
“Great! I’ll take that as two yeses!” BC says.
“I didn’t…” M’Bekke starts, but then stops. He gives in. “Okay. Go ahead. Make your statement. I’ll make sure we send representatives, theologians, whatever, to whatever discussions you call for.”
“Thank you, M’Bekke. This is a groundbreaking moment, gentlemen!”
“Indeed,” the Khalif says. He rises to his feet and extends his hand to shake BC’s. BC shakes the Khalif’s hand. He looks over at M’Bekke hopefully. M’Bekke glares back briefly, but then smiles and stands, extending his hand to BC. BC then steps back, giving the other two men the opportunity to shake each other’s hands.
After the briefest hesitation, and a glance at the rest of the war council looking on in anticipation, the Khalif of the UIN and Pope John Paul the Fourth of the NcC shake hands.
“Hold on a second,” BC asks the two. “Krish? Can you make sure we get footage of this?”
The scientist pulls out a recording cube and places it on the tabletop.
“Okay… cameras are recording… Now!”
“Smile, gentlemen, smile!” BC says past a grin of his own. He stands behind and between the two others, one hand on the shoulder of each man over their shaking hands. Never underestimate the power of a good photo op!