Preacher man, p.8
Preacher Man, page 8
“One World, One Humanity,” Laney said.
That had been the essay that Marusya hadn’t included in too many of the books she had published. At least yet. And she was glad she hadn’t, because too many people would have seen through Brother Cormac’s disguise.
Her cackle interrupted everything. Eyes locked on her as she giggled.
“We’re a publishing company,” Maru finally said when she got her breath back. “Our first client has been a fire-breathing Socialist Democrat Revolutionary, yes?”
Nods. Wary nods, but Maru supposed that she might have folks who understood her a little too well at this table.
“What if our second client focused on more uplifting religious tracts?” she asked.
Laney started cackling immediately. Brianna grinned.
Poor Constanz was a bit lost, then he got it.
“Oh,” he said brightly. “The Collected Sermons of Brother Cormac?”
“Yes,” Maru smiled. “How many revolutions can we start out there?”
Overhead, the whines and thunks of Abigail’s shuttle docking and being locked into the upper hull overrode all conversation.
Everything settled on her shoulders again, like an old shawl.
She rose with as much dignity as a horny seventeen-year-old might manage. Laney’s grin nearly made her lose the rest of her composure, but Maru nodded to everyone and started to walk aft.
“I’ve done a great many things in his name,” she reminded them, grins breaking out again. “Taken liberties with his intellect and intent. I should go ask permission. Or at least forgiveness.”
“And maybe, if you’re lucky, you deserve to be spanked?” Laney called after her, everyone laughing.
It was a good thing nobody could see her face as she heard folks coming down the stairs towards her.
Maybe.
Scene Twenty
Abigail had gotten things locked down tight quickly, but she was still a bit surprised that Tessa and the others had waited for her before opening the hatch to the ship.
Blakeslee Julian bowed to her now, wig off in one hand and guitar case in the other.
The four of them exited together. Tessa concerned. Wyatt still nearly white-hot with a rage he was working to subdue.
Brother Cormac, who was also Blakeslee Julian, had a calmness about him that she found refreshing. And a bit surprising, in one so young.
If she could get away with saying that about someone only three years her junior. But she’d also spent a decade learning the hardest curricula in the galaxy. Other schools taught you how to do one thing exceptionally.
Players had to be everything to everyone, all the time.
He could have turned into one, had he not set his heart and soul on democracy instead.
And he would have been amazing.
Never again would Abigail consider Wabrook a dull and boring place, though she supposed that they were likely to fall back into their old ways soon enough.
Once all this wildness blew over.
Down the aft stairs to the cargo bay. Auntie met them at the bottom of the steps, indecisive.
Blakeslee carefully put his case down, then dropped his wig atop it and engulfed her in a hug that quickly got a little steamy.
Okay, way steamy.
“There’s tea forward,” Laney called from the hatch.
Tessa muttered something under her breath that sounded like, “get a room, you two,” then started walking. Abigail and Wyatt followed.
Fin was there when they arrived, so Abigail found a mug and sniffed what Laney had prepared. Lovely. She added water and moved to the table.
Abigail wondered if the two lovebirds would surface eventually. Or walk forward through the kitchen.
Or stay in the cargo bay.
“Are we safe?” she asked Fin as she settled.
“Nothing but weather radar on this planet,” he nodded. “As long as we’re gone by daylight, I don’t think we’ll scare anything but cattle.”
She turned to Tessa.
“What next?” Abigail asked.
“My cargo run to Wabrook is complete,” Tessa said. “Can’t help it if nobody chose to contract me to haul anything anywhere else. Technically, we were deadheading back to Newhall at this point.”
“Is that wise?” Fin asked. “Considering who we’re currently transporting?”
“Worse,” Laney spoke up as her tea steeped. “I think Maru and I have a plan that would see us returning to Bernadette in the near future, if only for a short period of time.”
“How short?” Tessa asked.
Abigail listened in shock as she heard Laney sketch out the plans she and Auntie had apparently come up with over wine in town tonight.
Obviously, those two needed more adult supervision. Especially if there was going to be wine involved.
She also made a mental note to include more girls’ nights in her calendar, going forward. What else had she missed?
Laney rambled down to silence. Tessa scowled but didn’t comment. It was a good plan, with enough details worked out to understand how to make it work.
Still dangerous as hell. Even for this crew.
Auntie walked in. Holding Blakeslee’s hand like shy teenagers on a first date.
Second date, in this case.
Auntie blushed when everyone turned to smile at her.
“Everyone, Blakeslee Julian, recently known as Brother Cormac,” Auntie said, then went about the table introducing them.
Abigail rose and got him a mug and some tea. Blakeslee looked like he needed it.
“Thank you, all of you, for rescuing me,” he said as things settled down. “Again, I might add. Hopefully, it does not become a habit.”
“You planning to settle down and think deep philosophical thoughts in a cave in the desert?” Wyatt asked.
“No,” Blakeslee shook his head. “That amounts to nothing more than a form of mental masturbation that accomplishes nothing. There is much to do. Too much.”
Wyatt nodded and dropped it, but she’d seen him reading those works. Critically, even, because some of the vocabulary popped up in conversation occasionally.
“What are your plans?” Abigail asked.
“You are a Player, yes?” he asked carefully.
“I am,” she replied, smiling. “The very model of the bourgeoisie tool you occasionally rail about.”
“Only because you are reduced to serving those people for money,” he countered with a warm smile. “In a properly constructed society, all with gifts such as yours would have a basic income sufficient to allow them to pursue such entertainment methods as appealed, then share them as widely as they chose.”
“From each according to his ability,” Laney quoted. “To each, according to his need. Or her need.”
“Precisely,” he agreed. “Once you have freedom from need—from hunger—from fear—then all are free to pursue art for the sake of art itself. If none grow wealthy in the process, then none starve, either. The aristocracy that holds a boot on everyone’s throat is entirely unnecessary.”
“You sound remarkably like an itinerant preacher I heard speak recently,” Tessa pointed out. “Man had all sorts of crazy ideas about building a civilization on love instead of blood and money.”
“Sounds revolutionary,” Blakeslee agreed with a smile. “And like something several of the more famous prophets have suggested in their time.”
“I have a proposition,” Maru offered, then flustered terribly when everyone smiled at her. “Not like that. Blakeslee, what if we were to start sending your books to worlds in the Core, as if officially published with Lorastir approval?”
“This is a dangerous step up from what you have undertaken to date,” he noted warily as Abigail studied the young man.
Somewhat smitten by Auntie, but also extremely careful around all the dangerous people at the table, including, she supposed, herself. In her own way.
“We have the tools and skills,” Laney offered in a vague way that told you as much as you needed to know.
“Go on,” he nodded.
“And then, maybe, we also need to start publishing sermons by a certain Brother Cormac,” Auntie nodded back. “Religious things that don’t challenge the authorities.”
“At least as obviously challenge them,” he retorted.
“Yes,” Auntie agreed. “As obviously. Just as dangerous, but over a longer time frame. Would that be acceptable to you?”
“Why are you doing this?” he asked, pausing to look around the table and include everyone here.
Even if he didn’t understand who they were.
“Because it needs doing,” Tessa said, as if that covered it.
And it might.
From each, according to their ability, as it were.
They could.
And the need was great.
“I did not intend to travel with you,” he countered. “Do not, as you maintain a much higher profile than is safe for me.”
“Understood,” Tessa acknowledged. “We’ll depart shortly and head somewhere. You’ll tell me where you think is safe enough to drop you off on our way to Newhall. And maybe Bernadette after that.”
“I have not written down many of my sermons,” he offered, like a man looking for an easy way out.
“Then it’s a good thing we stole your Tabulator and repaired it,” Tessa grinned. “Maybe you can type up a few before we get there. And mail us more as time goes on. We’re pretty trusted with handling the mail on many worlds, so you could get us reels easy enough.”
“And ignite something of a revolution?” he asked.
“That also needs doing,” Tessa said. “Know anybody better suited to doing it?”
Abigail managed to keep her jaw from falling open, but only barely.
Because Tessa was serious.
They all were.
This band of crazy misfits was entering into a conspiracy to challenge the might of Amarns Sigra and the entirety of the Lorastir Empire.
Abigail could see them pulling it off, too.
It was gonna be an adventure.
Afterward: Pastor Mike
I first met Pastor Mike on the bus in about 2010. We both lived out in Renton, WA at the time and worked in downtown Seattle, taking the 102 in. At some point, I noticed him reading the Dungeon Master’s Guide (D&D) and we got to talking, because gamer nerds.
Then I mentioned my buddy Chuck that I gamed regularly with (The Tuesday Crew), and it turned out to be the same guy he’d originally played D&D with in Junior High, but had lost touch with. (There were all the usual 80s histrionics about devil worship and that crap raised by the holy rollers, and Mike’s family were among the holiest back then.)
After a bit, I talked to my group, and got their permission to bring Mike in as a player. He was, in those days, fantastic when he got into character. He could have been an actor had he wanted, because he had the gift for characterization. It also made him a fantastic GM, the few times he did so.
Problem was, there were a couple of militant atheists in the group (and I mean the ‘going out of their way to be assholes to people about it’ kind) and Pastor Mike was never comfortable with their rage. He was always motivated by love.
I talk a hard game about most holy rollers, because when you start listening to them, it becomes obvious quickly that they leave off most of the red letters, if they even bother with more than about two or three parts of the Old Testament that they can use as weapons on people.
Not Mike. Never Mike.
He never got angry at how some of the folks treated him. Simply nodded and eventually walked away from them. He and I still played when I had space to join his group, but mostly we were just friends hanging out.
That changed in the spring of 2018. The old Tuesday Crew was finally showing all the fractures of bad personality conflicts. As a couple of guys who had been picking on Mike didn’t have him around anymore, they turned on the rest of us. Me in particular, because I’d chosen to rearrange my life and become happy, which I guess offended them.
I had found a better way to live, meeting the future Fabulous Publisher Babe™ in 2013 and marrying her in 2015. And got struck by lightning and pixie dust in my writing career to the point that I walked away from a day job in Feb 2018 entirely to write.
Happy. And Mike was happy for me. The others…
April of 2018, he and I meet up in a bookstore in Enumclaw to have coffee, because he was the Assistant Pastor of the local Nazarene church at that point, and it was a nice central place to hang out.
We’re in back at a table, talking about the Tuesday Crew that he’d left, but that he misses gaming and wished there was something we could do, because his own group was falling apart as well.
At one point, this tall, bald guy walks by us to look at the athletics and martial arts shelves over in one corner. And he’s listening as we talk, but Mike and I aren’t paying that much attention until Piper Jon walks over, pulls up and chair, and introduces himself.
From that point, the three of us had a group. We played in that bookstore around Mike’s dialysis schedule and Jon’s work (fireman, WEIRD hours and days off). Fifth Edition D&D was out, so we taught Jon what he’d missed in not playing since high school while learning the new rules.
And while other players came and went from that group, Mike was always there when his health allowed it. Problem was, his health wasn’t that great. Twice he crash-carted (heart failure that they managed to restart). Lost half his immense weight until he was a gaunt skeleton.
Mike was born in Feb. Jon in April. Me in June. The running joke is that Jon looks his age (mid-50s), while I tend to look at decade younger and Mike two decades older. Frail, old man.
However, his humor never wavered. I never heard him lose his patience or his temper, no matter how sharply challenged by life or people.
Because he was filled with love for everyone. Always.
There was one Friday night where I was the GM and his phone rang. He took the call with apologies, then walked to the far end of the room. Woman was leaving her husband and needed the church to help escape. Mike organized everything, while repeatedly apologizing to the rest of us that he couldn’t do anything in game. None of were the least offended.
Because he had that higher calling. Someone was in need and he stepped into the breech. Always.
When I started writing this book, I had in mind Brother Cormac as a different kind of revival preacher. Not the classical fire-and-brimstone-slinger who brings down the fear of God on people to get them to repent of their sins.
That only works when you want people to fear.
Those religions don’t really last. The modern evangelical movement of fear and anger has visibly done more damage to their numbers of faithful than anyone might have believed, because most people don’t want to live in fear.
However, I had a paragon of love in front of me. As I wrote those words that come out of Brother Cormac’s mouth, I heard them in Mike’s voice. I still do.
That was how he would have said it. Done it. Him, alone on that stage with that guitar, quietly playing while he spoke of the importance of love.
My goal had been to surprise him with a copy of this book, dedicated, as it should be, to him, for providing me the right words. For Brother Cormac who is separate from that other guy, and a revolution in and of himself.
I can’t do that. I never got the chance to tell him how much his entire life meant to me and what a shining example he provided for how you can approach religion with love instead of anger and fear.
Every one of those words were something he would have said, if put into that position.
Sadly, we got the news last night that he had passed. His youngest daughter had his phone and found the group text chat that we used to coordinate games, planning for the next session Monday night.
At this point, I presume a heart attack that finally caught him, because he’s been too weak physically. But never emotionally. Never intellectually. Even when he lost some of that mental spark from the health issues, he never lost love for each and every person he met.
And I will miss him.
I’m glad that the rest of you will get to have known him, even that little bit.
Because he was special.
Michael L. Anderson (1969 – 2023)
Rest in Peace, my brother.
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About the Author
Blaze Ward writes science fiction in the Alexandria Station universe (Jessica Keller, The Science Officer, The Story Road, etc.) as well as several other science fiction universes, such as Star Dragon, the Dominion, and more. He also writes odd bits of high fantasy with swords and orcs. In addition, he is the Editor and Publisher of Boundary Shock Quarterly Magazine. You can find out more at his website www.blazeward.com, as well as Facebook, Goodreads, and other places.
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