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.He arched his back and stared at the vaulted, cathedral ceilings far above his head.He then approached the cylinder.For Winters, the connection between the trident that Nick had been holding and the objects inside the cylinder was instantaneous.Those must be more seed packages, destined for other worlds.Winters thought, his crisp logic disappearing in a quick leap of faith.With six-root carrots and who knows what else to populate a few of the billions of worlds in our galaxy alone.The commander walked around the cylinder as if he were in a dream.His mind continually replayed both what Nick had told him right before they descended and the amazing scene he had witnessed when the spiderlike creature had shrunk up and jumped into the golden object.So it’s all true.All those things the scientists have been saying about the possibility of vast hordes of living creatures out there among the stars.He stopped for a moment, partially listening to the strange noises behind the walls.And we are only a few of God’s many many children.Organ music, similar in timbre to that which Carol had heard when she had finished playing “Silent Night,” but with a different tune, began to sound in the distant reaches of the ceiling above him.It reminded Winters of church music.His reaction was instinctual.He knelt down in front of the cylinder and clasped his hands together in prayer.The music swelled in the room.What Winters heard in his head was the introduction to the Doxology.the short hymn that he had heard every single Sunday for eighteen years in the Presbyterian church in Columbus, Indiana.In his mind’s eye he was thirteen years old again and sitting next to Betty in his choir robes.He smiled at her and they stood up together.Praise God from whom all blessings flow.The choir sang the first phrase of the hymn and Winters’ brain was bombarded by a montage of memories from his early teens and before, a suite of epiphanic images of his innocent and unknowing closeness with a parental God, one who was in the wall behind his bed or just over his rooftop or at most in the summer afternoon clouds above Columbus.Here was an eight-year-old boy praying that his father would not find out that it was he who had set fire to the vacant lot across from the Smith mansion.Another time, at ten, the little Vernon wept bitter tears as he held his dead cocker spaniel Runtie in his arms and begged the omniscient God to accept his dead dog’s soul into heaven.The night before the Easter pageant, the first time that Vernon had portrayed Him in His final hours, dragging the cross to Calvary, eleven-year-old Vernon had been unable to sleep.As the night was passing by the boy began to panic, began to fear that he would freeze up and forget his lines.But then he had known what to do.He had reached under his pillow and found the little New Testament that always stayed there, day and night.He had opened it to Matthew 28.“Go ye therefore,” it had said, “baptizing all nations.”That had been enough.Then Vernon had prayed for sleep.His friendly, fatherly God had sent the little boy an image of himself delivering a spellbinding performance in the pageant the next day.Comforted by that picture, he had fallen asleep.Praise Him all creatures here below.With the second phrase of the hymn resounding in his ears the venue for Winters’ mental montage changed to Annapolis Maryland.He was a young man now, in the last two years of his university work at the Naval Academy.The pictures that flooded his brain were all taken at the same place, outside the beautiful little Protestant chapel in the middle of the campus.He was either walking in or walking out.He went in the snow, in the rain, and in the late summer heat.He would fulfill his pledge.He had made a bargain with God, a business deal as it were, you do your part and I’ll do mine.It was no longer a one-sided relationship.Now, life had taught the serious young midshipman from Indiana that it was necessary to offer this God something in order to guarantee His compliance with the deal.For two years Vernon went regularly to the chapel, twice a week at least.He did not really worship there; he corresponded with a worldly God, one that read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.They discussed things.Vernon reminded Him that he was steadfastly upholding his end of the deal and thanked Him for keeping His part of the bargain.But never once did they talk about Joanna Carr.She didn’t matter.The whole affair was between Midshipman Vernon Winters and God.Praise Him above ye heavenly host.The commander had unconsciously bowed his head almost to the floor by the time he heard the third phrase of the hymn.In his heart he knew the next stops on this spiritual journey.He was off the coast of Libya first, praying those horrible words requesting death and destruction for Gaddafi’s family.God had changed as Lieutenant Winters had matured.He was now an executive, a president of something larger than a nation, an admiral, a judge, somewhat remote, but still accessible in time of real need.However, he had lost his all-forgiving nature.He had become stern and judgmental.Killing a small Arab girl wasn’t like burning down the vacant lot across from the Smith mansion.Winters’ God now held him personally accountable for all his actions.And there were some sins almost beyond forgiveness, some deeds so heinous that one might wait for weeks, months, or even years in the anterooms of His court before He would consent to hear your plea for mercy and expiation.Again the commander remembered his desperate search for Him after that awful evening when he had sat on the couch beside his wife and watched the videotaped newsreels of the Libya bombing.She had been so proud of him.She had taped every segment of CBS news that had covered the North African engagement and then surprised him with a complete showing the day after he returned to Norfolk.It was only then that the full horror of what he had done had struck Winters.Struggling not to vomit as the camera had shown the gruesome result of those missiles that had been fired from his planes, Winters had stumbled out into the night air, alone, and wandered until daybreak [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]