From The One

By Don Jones

A closed-in community isolated from an outside world with which it long ago lost all contact.  Everything, even the air that they breathe, is self-contained but all is not well.  The people of Refuge are ruled with a rod of iron by an the Archdeacon and are subject to a rigid religious discipline.
One man amongst them begins to question the very foundations of their world.  Refuge is breaking down and the Chosen need to break out into the wider world.
Luc seeks the Portal through which they can escape but the Redeemers are closing in.
Is there any future for Luc and for the Chosen? 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don Jones
• Release date: Jul 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536575262

Don Jones

Don Jones is a PowerShell MVP, speaker, and trainer. He developed the Microsoft PowerShell courseware and has taught PowerShell to more than 20,000 IT pros. Don writes the PowerShell column for TechNet Magazine and blogs about PowerShell at PowerShell.com. Ask Don your PowerShell questions at http://bit.ly/AskDon.

Book preview

CONTENTS:

FORWARD 

BOOK 1 - CHOSEN 

BOOK 2 - ORIGIN 

BOOK 3 - TRANSITION 

BOOK 4 - BEYOND 

EPILOGUE 

FORWARD

The final prayer of Brother Luc:

Oh Lord, forgive me my sins and receive me into Thy boundless mercy.

I am dying and I deserve to die.  I have killed and I am being punished.  I am starving to death in the midst of plenty.  This is Your punishment for my heinous crimes.

How did it ever come to this?  Am I the only one at fault?  I was so sure of the rightness of my actions, despite the laws I was breaking.  Was my rebellion truly a rebellion against You, Lord, and not just against the oppressive dominion of the Deacons?

I thought I had seen the truth and was following Your true will, oh Lord, which had been distorted by the dogma of the Archdeacon.  When I broke out of our closed world I thought it was with Your blessing.

Alas, I was mistaken.  It was the Devil tempting me with empty promises, and I fell.

I see it all clearly now.  You know the error I fell into, oh Lord.  My pride has been the vehicle of my doom.

My end is near and I see the error of my ways at last.  I confess my sins and ask that You have mercy on the soul of this sinful penitent.

BOOK ONE

CHOSEN

CHAPTER 1

The heavy, metal door creaked loudly on its hinges as Luc Pakak pulled it open.  His round,  blunt-featured face remained impassive as he pulled the door shut behind him but a familiar warmth was building inside him, to match the warmth of the surrounding air.  He shrugged off  his heavy robe and stood naked, but for a soiled, ragged loincloth, and breathed in the luxury of warm air.  His skin began to glow.  He stood in a green dazzle of clear light reflecting from the green foliage before him.

The air in the Hydroponics Hall was ten degrees above freezing.  He came here daily to service the water and nutriment flows and husband the precious plants growing here.  That made him one of the most privileged members of the Chosen. A handful of others had tasks related to other growing environments but none were as warm as his domain and no-one spent as much of their day in them as Luc spent in the Hydroponics Hall.  One degree centigrade above zero was the ambient temperature they all lived in the rest of the time. 

Luc glided his way between the growing trays, checking the water levels as he went, and found them lower than they should have been.  He frowned in annoyance.  Little faults were not unusual but he was sure that they were becoming more frequent lately.

Luc's prime responsibility was as gardener - to ensure optimum food production.  But he was spending far too much time these days tinkering with the pumps, improvising plugs for the leaks which started in the growing pans and supply pipes with increasing frequency, and being side-tracked by a variety of other petty, time-consuming faults.  These distractions were diverting him more and more from his primary role.  He couldn't be entirely sure that the  delicate task of balancing the nutrient and water flows and primping the demanding plants, to get the most production from the least input, was not suffering as a consequence.

His efficiency figures had fallen for  the third month in a row.  The  total fall for the year was still only a fraction of one percent, but it was worrying and he knew it would be noticed, sooner or later.  He was aware that plants, like all living things, were not entirely uniform in their growth patterns, or anything else for that matter.  That was an essential facet of life.  His father had made him aware of this, without actually putting the observation into plain language.  Such things were best left unsaid in their world.  It might offend the Doctrine of Perfection.

He would have to alert his superior. The consequences of making his shortfall known could be dire.  He could be accused of laxity, maybe even of sinful thoughts or deeds.  If  the trend continued he might end up in the hands of the Redeemers, God forbid.  Yet he knew that he must act.  Someone else was bound to notice soon anyway and, if he did not report the shortfall himself first, he could be denounced for concealing it.  He wasn't sure just what the consequences of such a denunciation would be but he knew, beyond a doubt, that they would be worse than if  he made a clean breast of it himself, before it came to the attention of anyone else.

'God loveth a repentant sinner'.  The Deacons loved a repentant anything, Luc thought, with a hint of asperity.  It gave them an even greater hold over you, if that was possible.  A confession would hopefully result only in the penance of preying for an extra hour or so on his knees, but he could put up with that.  The Deacons might have most of the Chosen convinced that they could read minds but Luc wasn't so sure.  He had succumbed to an  unorthodox thought, from time to time in the past, without being detected.  An hour extra in prayer every day would give him  more time to think.  He was sure Our Lord did not really mind the occasional foray into realms beyond the Deacons' rigid dogma, as long as it was well-intentioned and did not challenge His pre-eminence.  Luc very much hoped this was the case. 

A new, aberrant thought came to him as his gaze travelled over the lineup of green and growing plants that were in his care.  Perhaps the unorthodox  ideas that arose spontaneously in his mind were due to the time he spent in this well-heated environment.  Perhaps, in the rest of this pared down world, where all the less lucky Brethren had to spend their days, everyone else's  minds were so numbed by the unrelenting cold that they were incapable of the effort needed to fashion any new thoughts?

Luc turned his mind back to the practical problem of the lowered water levels. He made his way carefully in amongst the green abundance of foliage and backtracked through the tangle of pipes bringing precious water to the shallow tanks in which his charges grew and bore fruit.

He could find no leak, beyond the many he had patched up in recent months.

He had to thread his body with extreme care through the chaotic tangle of water and feed lines to make his inspection.  Many of the pipes were wafer thin in places and fragile to the point of disintegration.  Even something as  seemingly insignificant as an inadvertent brush against any of these vital supply lines might result in a calamitous collapse of a whole length of pipe.  Small leaks were a constant headache requiring ingenuity, delicacy and long periods of time, diverting him from his primary task of maximizing food production, but a larger collapse in a pipe would be catastrophic.

There were rumours that once upon a time, long, long ago, there had been spare parts, not only lengths of pipe but other components as well.  His father had passed this along to him, in his roundabout, indirect way.  Luc was not sure he believed such tales.  Surely, even long ago, the world would not have had such abundance, such un-utilized surplus?  There were, though, those sections of the Hydroponics Hall's floor where no tanks stood, just faint rectangular outlines on the empty floor.

Luc had an enquiring mind that he could not always control.  It had caused him to flirt with disaster on occasion, though he had always, so far anyway, managed to avoid any but minor punishments.  He had also been gifted with a lively and swiftly deployed imagination that had enabled him to talk his way out of serious consequences all his life.

His enquiring mind had not been content to just accept those faint  rectangles etched on the unused floor space of the Hydroponics Hall and get on with his tasks.  More and more of late they had intruded, like a recurring itch, into his thoughts.  Those outlines were not just random marks. They pointed to something. There must have something there... but no.  He shied away from pursuing this line of thought any further.

These were matters best left to lie.  Such thoughts were dangerous and unsettling.  He should never even start thinking down such a path, let alone discuss it with anyone else.  Nothing was ever discussed. Things were as they were, as they had been laid down by the Word of God in the Beginning, and that was how they would remain.  They were eternal, unchanging, the perfect manifestation of God's benevolence towards His Chosen in the world He had mapped out for them.

He wished he could expunge the unsettling thoughts that  came unbidden into his mind more and more frequently nowadays.  It would be so much safer to do so.

Practical matters demanded his full attention if disaster was to be averted.  He pushed such dangerous and unsettling thoughts aside.

Luc shuddered, but he knew his duty.  He crept with infinite care over the lines of water pipes.  He feared that, in the absence of any leak, there must be a blockage, or partial blockage, somewhere down the line.  He placed his ear almost in contact with the pipes as he moved along them and finally noticed a tiny difference in the timbre of the gurgling noise of water moving in a section of larger gauge pipe that fed water to a whole section of tanks.  A frisson of fear skittered down his spine.  He had found the problem.

The only solution was to uncouple that section of pipe and clear the obstructing material out of it.  If he made a mistake, if the pipe shattered, what could he do?  He turned off the water in that cluster of pipes and prayed fervently to God to take pity on him as he took up a large wrench from his toolbox and slowly, carefully, so infinitely carefully, placed it around the coupling collar joining the offending length of pipe to its neighbour and brought pressure to bear on the joint.

The spanner slipped.  It was worn and no longer fitted snugly around the six sided collar.

How could that be?

Another unwelcome thought popped into his mind.  How was it that the spanner did not fit?  This was what it had been designed to do.  Why would it be too big, or was it worn away?  How did such an anomaly fit into the perfect world the Creator had manufactured for His  chosen people, as the Archdeacon always insisted it had been?  He pushed this thought aside also, with a shudder.  Now was not  the time for blasphemous questioning.  He needed the Lord on his side, and why would He lend His help if  His perfection was being questioned by the very supplicant who was asking for His favour?  Luc prayed fervently, beseeching forgiveness for his errant thought, disowning his near blasphemy and begging, with all the anguished sincerity he could muster, for God's aid.

He needed a miracle.  God granted it to him in the form of an idea.  Luc ripped a length of cloth from his tattered loincloth and wrapped it as tightly as he could, without ripping the worn material, around the six sided collar and then worked the wrench carefully back into position.  He put pressure on the joint and the wrench did not slip.  He increased the pressure and felt the sweat break out on his brow and begin to trickle down his naked back.  He was terrified that increasing pressure on the joint would see it, or the offending pipe, break.

God was with him.  The joining nut moved, and with little more trouble the joint parted and laid the offending section of pipe open to his ministrations.  He paused to send a fervent prayer of thanks to God, along with a sincere promise to think only pure thoughts in the future.

An hour of delicate, fearful activity and the blockage was dealt with.  He completed  the further hours needed to minister to his vulnerable charges and he was ready to leave the heated refuge of the Hydroponics Hall with a container full of tasty and nutritious fruits and vegetables, to add some tasty Sabbath Day titbits to the monotonous diet of the Chosen.

Luc shrugged himself back into his heavy robe, careful not to put any unnecessary strain on the ancient garment.  There were darns upon darns upon darns in its now fragile fabric but, as there was no possibility of a replacement if it fell to bits, the life-saving robe had to treated at all times like a precious relic.  He had seen the consequences of  accumulated carelessness.  More than one Brother or Sister had ended up with a pile of fragments and no way of covering their nakedness to stave off the prevailing cold.  They had either been picked up by the Redeemers or frozen to death before their time and ended up in the hands of the Redeemers all the same.

Luc had come to the realization, quite some time ago, that some of the Chosen were not as Chosen as the rest of them.  This was a thought he kept to himself.  If uttered it would have been branded a heresy and the Redeemers would have been knocking on his cubicle door almost before the words were out of his mouth.  Everyone ended up in the hands of the  Redeemers, there was no escaping that, but Luc wanted his three score years before the inevitable came to pass.

Luc struggled along the dark tunnels with his laden container, making his way to the larder  where he must deliver his burden to complete his weekly quota.  Or nearly so.  If the Deacon of Provender weighed it  he would find it slightly under the prescribed amount.  The shortfall was minuscule, a matter of  a few leaves not quite as full as they had been a year ago.  There was always  variation of course.  Living, growing things did not conform rigidly to growth laws, even in this, The Lord's perfect world, though this was bordering on an heretical thought and he would never dare to speak it out loud.  So even if the Deacon did check and did find the tiny shortfall this would not, of itself, bring censure down on Luc's head.

But the Deacon did check periodically and he kept meticulous records.  There was a whispered rumour, handed down among the gardeners, that once upon a time Evil had breached the walls of their Refuge and a gardener had succumbed to temptation, succumbed to the honeyed blandishments Satan had insinuated into his dreams, and eaten of the fruits of the garden before delivering them up to the Larder.

This current shortfall in Luc's produce was one of many over an extended period.  The Deacon was sure to notice the trend one of these days, if he had not done so already.  Luc resolved yet again to bring  the matter to the Deacon's attention that very evening, after evening prayer.  Surely if he took the initiative, if he demonstrated his zeal spontaneously, it must be evidence of his righteousness?  Luc would assure the Deacon that he was blameless in this matter.  This had to be his best, his safest course of action.  If he continued to let the matter lie it might look as if he was trying to hide the fact.  The Deacon, if he was the one who discovered the slight but continuous decline in production, might suspect that Luc was in some way culpable, as if he had been hiding a guilty secret.

No, frightening as it would be to confess to the Deacon, it was the safest course of action in the circumstances.  He had known for some time that this was so but he had delayed, hoping that the decline would halt itself.  After all, he had not altered his routine in any way.  He had continued to carry out his duties as he had been taught by his father, many years ago.  He did his very best, he was sure that his effort had not been flagging, and surely his ingenious repair work was better, and certainly more frequently called upon, than it had been before the decline, the very small decline, in production had begun?  He was certain in his own mind that the shortfall was not his fault.  But would the Deacon see it that way?

He sidled into the busy kitchen and placed his produce on a bench in the corner of the larder.  After a short pause, during which he observed that everybody else was going about their business and taking no notice of him, he bent his head forward so that his face was obscured by his cowl and wended his way between the busy cooks and kitchen helpers and back out into the tunnel.

He would definitely have to bring the shortfall in the produce he was providing to the attention of the Deacon of Provender sometime soon.  But not just yet; not today.  It would be better to pick his moment.  Some sign would  reveal a propitious moment to him in the near future, he was sure.  He could wait until then, he told himself.  There was no need to be hasty.

CHAPTER 2

Luc heard the whooshing breath of another person in the dimness ahead of him.  As he moved forward along the curved tunnel, he saw a familiar figure silhouetted against the dull orange of the intersection  glow globe.  He recognized the distinctive, shambling outline of his lifelong friend, Clemente Iluak.

Brother Clem, where are you off to? he asked.  It's time for evening prayer you know, you silly fellow.  You're going the wrong way.

Yes, yes, but I's got to see me Blobbies, Luc. They needs me.  I only needs to stroke 'em and say nice things to 'em like, to make 'em happy, see?  'T will only take  a minute or two.

A minute or two we can spare, Luc assured him, but I'd better come along with you to make sure that's all the time you take.  If you're late for evening prayer one more time the Archdeacon is likely to set the Redeemers on you.

Luc smiled at his friend.  Clem had that effect on most of the Brethren.  He seemed to trail good will and happiness around with him wherever he went.  Rare commodities in their severely devout world.  Clem had no sense of time though, a minute or two could stretch into hours and he didn't seem to realize the difference.

They had been born on the same day, these two so totally different beings, and grown up together.  Luc had assumed responsibility for his ingenuous friend from the time they became more than toddlers.  Clem was a simple soul with nothing but goodness in his every thought and deed but he was incapable of following the rigid and detailed catalogue of rules which hemmed in their lives.  Luc had been his guardian, steering him through the days, keeping him in line or concocting excuses or alibis for any of his transgressions when he had managed to slip the leash that Luc tried to keep on his wayward behaviour. It wasn't that Clem ever deliberately got out of line, he just wasn't able to live his life to an ordered routine.  He was in all things impulsive, led by the whim of the moment.  He was as incapable of orderly, well thought out behaviour as he was of a deliberately bad or wrong act.  He was an innocent, a simple child in a big, shambling adult's body.

It was not all a one way relationship though.  Luc had more than his fair share of curiosity - a dangerous trait in their rigid society - and a lively and intelligent imagination to go with it.  He had often, as they grew up, found himself on the wrong side of the straight-jacket of rules that ordered every facet of their lives.  He had, more often than not, wriggled out of serious consequences due to the transparently innocent and benign presence of Clem at his side.  A Clem who had not even suspected that the escapade Luc had involved him in was in any way transgressing one of the bewildering mass of rules that hedged in their lives. Theirs was a symbiotic relationship.  Each derived an advantage from the other.  The weakness of the one was countered by the strength of the other.

They pushed the door shut behind them and Clem shambled over to his Blobbies, the bio-plasmic masses that filled the room.

There, there, my Lovelies, he crooned, Daddy's here.  Everything will be all right, now.

He lumbered over to the pulsating globules of  flesh and stroked them, each in turn, humming wordlessly as he passed among them.

They can't hear you, you know, Luc  said, with a note of  asperity in his voice.  They can't feel that stroking either.  They haven't got ears and they haven't got nerves.

Shush, shush, Clem murmured.  You'll upset them some more, Luc.  They feels it when you is angry,

They don't feel anything, you dope, Luc muttered.  They don't have anything to feel with.  He had moderated his voice however, though Clem had still heard him.

They feels Luc, they does.  Don't you, my Lovelies? he crooned, gently.  You needs to know you is loved, don't you, my darlings, and he wrapped his arms around the nearest  bio-plasmic globe and rubbed his cheek softly on the greenish-grey skin. 

The pulsating gradually diminished.  If Luc hadn't known better, he would have said that they ended up purring with contentment. 

They were large globes of living matter.  Neither plant nor animal, they had no brain, no limbs, no discernible  body parts.  Clem's pet name for them - Blobbies - suited them very well.  They had a digestive tract.  They took in lichens and other low nutritive waste products and turned them into a nutritious 'flesh'.  They periodically grew nodules which could be cut off without harming the parent Blobbie. These were the source of much needed proteins and fats in the Brethren's diet.  They were also surprisingly tasty.  They were served up once a week, on the Lord's day, as a special, and necessary treat.

This harvesting of the nodules was an extra duty Luc took upon himself, making sure that Clem was always off on some fools errand when the deed had to be done.  He knew Clem would be terribly upset if  he witnessed this apparent maiming of his precious charges.

In fact, the periodic amputations had no discernible effect on the parent Blobbies.  At the time of harvesting, the nodules were all but detached already from the mature Blobbies and the tiny joining point, when severed, healed over on the base of the mature Blobbie almost immediately.  On his return, the unsuspecting Clem never seemed to worry about the difference.

When Luc, some years before,  prior to either of them taking up their fathers' duties, had carefully introduced the matter into a conversation with his simple friend, Clem had matter-of-factly explained that the Blobbies just reabsorbed the nodules most of the time.  Just occasionally, a Blobbie would grow a different sort of nodule, one with a much bigger attachment to its parent, and this type of nodule grew on to become a mature Blobbie in its turn and the old one, to which it was attached, would then itself gradually whither away.

Luc, by making sure Clem was absent during the harvesting periods, was continuing a subterfuge Clem's father had always practiced.  He had urged Luc to emulate this little deception when he was ready to pass on his husbandry duties to his ingenuous son. It was an added burden Luc was more than willing to shoulder. 

Despite what Clem seemed to believe, in his muddled way, the Blobbies had no brain and they were supposed to have no nervous system, but, nonetheless, they appeared to have some sort of primitive awareness.  They did somehow respond to Clem's ministrations, after all.  He crooned to them and he stroked them gently.  Clem loved them like a sentimental man would have loved a favourite pet, if there had been any pets in this severe, pared down world of theirs.

The Blobbies were Clem's special charges.  He mollycoddled them.  They in turn responded to his ministrations.  That, irksomely, was undeniable.  They had produced distinctly more  and larger nodules since Clem had been put in charge of them, after the day of his father's redeeming.  It didn't make any sense to Luc.  His bright, enquiring mind so wanted rational explanations, even though he lived in a world where everything in life was laid down by endless rules of behaviour and the standard explanation for anything was that it was 'the Will of God'.

It was the way it was however and Clem's results, which must surely stem from his special rapport with these minimally alive entities, baffled even the religious hierarchy.  Dogma had it that these bio-plasmic entities were a gift from God - 'manna from heaven' was their way of referring to them.  Luc thought Clem's 'Blobbies' was a much more fitting name for them.

Come on, Clem, he said in a tone which brooked no argument. He was getting as bad as Clem himself, he thought, mooning around, trying to fathom out the unfathomable. It's time to go to evening prayers.

Can't I just...?

No.  We're cutting it close as it is.  Say your goodbyes and we'll be on our way.

CHAPTER 3

They hurried along the dimly lit tunnels, making their way unerringly through the dark sections between the dim intersection lights, legacy of a lifetime of practice.  Barrel chests heaving in the thin, stale air, they slowed their stride and joined the last stragglers making their way down the final, lighted section of tunnel leading to the Hall of  Faith.

Stop that wheezing, Clem, Luc murmured in his friend's ear, and pulled on his arm to make him drop back behind the last of the stragglers.  Try to look as if we aren't dashing in at the last minute.  It doesn't do to look too conspicuous all the time.

It didn't do to look conspicuous at any time if one could help it.  Safety in their world lay in anonymous conformity.

Clem opened his mouth but Luc held up a hand to forestall the questions he knew were on their way.  Questions like - "We is dashing, so we don't be late.  Why is that  wrong? and, inevitably - What do 'conspicuous' mean?" 

Luc managed to usher Clem unobtrusively into the Hall of Faith, just before the Doorward pulled shut the  massive double doors. The doors uttered a loud screech as they swung together, as if in protest at the pairs tardy arrival.  They were among the last to enter.  Luc positioned them against the rear wall of the great hall, at the very back of the gathered congregation. Above their heads arched a high ceiling, streaked with grime and pocked with dark holes, like so many empty eye sockets, where glow globes had once fitted.  Only a few feeble globes still gleamed, throwing a dull light which barely managed to  achieve dim twilight in most of the cavernous space of the Hall of Faith.

The mass of anonymous Brethren stretched out before them, all in their tattered, faded robes, a drab, brown-grey phalanx, waiting expectantly, fearfully.  All had their hoods pulled over their heads to conserve precious body heat. The central aisle divided them, man from woman, but the enveloping robes effectively disguised this fact.

They all faced the elevated pulpit, the focus of the great public space.  A bright light, brighter than any other they would encounter during their daily lives, beamed down upon it.  In the shadows behind the pulpit loomed the dark forms of the black-robed Deacons, a knot of darkness on the raised dais that flanked the pulpit.

A faint collective intake of breath came from the serried ranks in the body of the great Hall  of Faith  greeting the imposing figure which detached itself from the ranks of the Deacons and ascended the steps to his place in the pulpit.  He threw back the  hood of his black robe and his piercing gaze seemed to transfix every last one of  the gathered congregation.

Father Gerardo Tupilek; Archdeacon, spiritual and temporal leader of them all.  His deeply lined face, all sunken planes and sharp angles, turned upwards, as if to embrace the shaft of light that bathed him, making him seem bigger, more solid, more imposing than any other figure in the hall.

He stood above them, figuratively, as well as physically, and the expectant members of the congregation shrank back into their tattered robes in anticipation of the onslaught to come.

The hush continued while the Archdeacon seemed to hold silent communion with the source of the light which illuminated and isolated him there upon the elevated pulpit, but at last he looked down at them.  He extended his arm and slowly swept his spread hand in an arc that encompassed them all.  The evening sermon, the most important of the day, had begun.

"The Lord watches over us all," the Archdeacon intoned, in a low, but carrying voice.  He paused.

"The Lord watches us all."  His voice had altered, become colder, hasher, and he seemed to stare into the eyes of each and every one of the congregation.

"The Lord watches us all, everywhere, in every moment of our insignificant lives," he continued, ominously.

"His all-seeing eye sees us all, day and night, sleeping and waking."  He jabbed out his hand again, but this time it was tightly clenched but for the gnarled forefinger which  pointed out at them in an act of terrible warning. 

"All that we are, all that we do, is in the mind of God!"

The congregation sighed and the shuffling of many feet rippled through the hall, signifying the tide of unfocused guilt that this opening salvo, with which the Archdeacon had begun his sermon, had unleashed among them.

The Archdeacon paused to let the unease run its course.  He held them all in  the palm of his hand.  Well, almost all.  Brother Clem felt no guilt.  He was puzzled though. 

Wh...  Clem began, but his knotted brow had forewarned Luc, who always kept watch on his simple friend.  He squeezed Clem's bicep with one hand and placed the other hand over Clem's mouth, producing a muffled cough himself, to disguise the sound of Clem's brief utterance.  Keeping his hand over his friend's mouth he leaned close, until his lips were all but touching Clem's ear, and murmured softly but urgently: Not now Clem.  Save your questions until after the meeting.  I'll explain it all then.

Clem seemed satisfied with this and settled down to wait out the sermon.  He would probably forget what he had wanted to ask by the time the meeting was over, anyway.  Clem could rarely understand much of what the Archdeacon said on these occasions and he decided to pass the time  thinking about ways he could best please his beloved charges, the Blobbies, when he was allowed to get back to them.

Father Gerardo, unaware of his failure in this one instance at least, was satisfied with the effect of his opening.  He flung both arms out to embrace the space above the congregation and continued:

In the beginning was the Void.  Dark, cold, empty.  And God said: 'Let there be light, let there be earth and water.'  And thus did He create the world.

The Archdeacon seemed to mould the air around him, as if he himself was in the act of re-creating all that God had made at the beginning of time.

"And then He looked upon the world He had created and it was empty.

He said: 'Let there be life upon the Earth,' and he created the One, the seed of all life.

His hand chopped down violently in emphasis between each weighty phrase.

And He filled the One with Potential, and from the One were to come the Many, the myriad forms of life that had been born as Idea in the mind of God and made manifest by the offspring of The One.

"From the One , the Many.

From the One, the Many, the congregation chanted softly into the silence that the Archdeacon let stretch on after his intoning of the beginning of all things.

"And in the fullness of time, as had been His Divine Plan, Man he made, made in the image of God, to walk upon the Earth.

"Then God said: 'I have created the world and I have created Man to live in the world.  But Man shall be more than any other creature that dwells upon the Earth.

'I have created Man in My own image and he shall be endowed with the right to decide his own actions.  He shall be given Free Will and he shall be given dominion over the world and all that I have placed upon it - the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the beasts of the field.'

And Our Lord looked upon the world that He had created, and saw that it was good.

"He saw that it was good. 

He saw that it was good, chanted the congregation, their hooded heads nodding in unison.  Then they fell silent again, waiting in anticipation.

"And God said: 'Thus have I created the world, and created Man to rule over all that lives in the world.  Now I can rest from My labours.'

And God turned His mind from all that He had done and rested.

The Archdeacon paused and looked around the crowded hall.

"But as God rested, Satan stole out of the realm of cold and darkness and looked upon His mighty works with envy and hatred, for such is the nature of Satan, the nature of Evil.  And Satan saw that Free Will, which God had given to Man, could be the instrument of Man's undoing, the means by which Satan could unleash Temptation into the pure world created by God.

"And while God rested, Satan sowed the seed of Evil into the world and many were Tempted and many Fell, and in their falling they besmirched the purity of God's creation, and abominations were unleashed into the air, into the waters and into the fields.  And when God turned back His eye upon His creations, upon the fruits of His labour, He was angered and He was saddened. 

But our Lord is a just God and He gathered together the few who had resisted temptation and He instructed them to build this Refuge.  And He directed them, and those who followed them down through the generations, to reside within this Refuge and to guard it, through all the days of their lives, against the Evil which was all around them.

"Guard against Evil. 

Guard against Evil, chanted the congregation.

And He gave unto them, the Chosen of God, the Ark of the Covenant in which are kept the pure seeds of all that flew, and walked, and crawled, and swam upon the Earth, at the time of its Creation.

The Archdeacon turned and the congregation followed his gaze.  The dull gleam of reflected light bounced off the highlights of a half-seen shape that stood solid and awe-inspiring in the shadows behind the ranks of the Deacons.

"And in the fullness of time, when Satan and all his spawn have been defeated and destroyed, we, the Chosen, will emerge triumphant into the world and repopulate it with the pure of mind, and we shall cast the Seed from the Ark of the Covenant upon the still waters, and into the pure air, and onto the empty land and the World shall be again as God created it, at the Dawn of Time. 

Yes!  We are the Just!  We are the Good!  We are the Chosen!  We have a Covenant with God!  When the tide of  Evil has been pushed back, we will emerge triumphant!

We will emerge triumphant! roared back the congregation.

"We are the Chosen; the Chosen of God!

"We will triumph!  We shall overcome!

We shall overcome!

The Archdeacon let the chanting continue for many minutes as the serried ranks of the Chosen roared themselves towards a state of frenzied ecstasy.  Then his body seemed to jerk convulsively and swell up before them in the pulpit.  He threw his arms wide in a violent gesture and turned his face up to the light, so that it seemed to drink in the illumination until his face itself appeared to glow with its own inward fire of relentless  zeal.

"But we are mortal men!  Though we are the Righteous, though we are the Pure, though we are the Chosen of God,  still have we the Seed of Weakness within us that Satan seeks!

"When our Lord, in His wisdom, gave unto us this Refuge, He also gave us The Rule by which we should live, the Rule which gives us the strength to turn aside from Temptation and