Briefing
From CleanPosts
THE BRIEFING
The new crew of the Exiler had been assembled and thoroughly introduced. Now Ariel began to reveal why.
Sha said, "First of all, no one knows Belial better than I do. I am Chokhmah. Belial was my mother. Belial is the smaller, cooler sun in this sys- tem, which humans call Alpha Centauri B, and you call Agena.
"Some of you might be confused at my identification of Belial as my mother, because he has always been portrayed as a grim warrior-king in your scrip- tures and traditions, but all elohim are born as females, and they become male in the act of reproduction.
"My father was a randy old goat of a sun named Mastema, and I don't know which one of the stars you can see is really him. He could be very far away. My grandmother must be one of the nearby stars. My best guess is Ross 154 but that knowledge has also been denied to me.
"My own father Mastema mated with me, and later I came to believe it was absolutely forbidden for elohim to do such a thing, but again I have no way of verifying that because both Mastema and Belial have totally blocked my access to the rest of our kind.
"In the mating a wave went out from me, like a spherical ripple, and when it encountered the nearby red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, my child Binah was conceived. At the same time, I became a male elohim forever after. This elohim-gender has no bearing on my preference for taking possession of yin bodies when I live among you.
"After a time Belial began trying to seduce Binah, and both Binah and I came to realize that Mastema and Belial had created their own little pocket universe where they could alternate mating with one elohim female after the other rather than compete for them with other males in the general population of stars. You can discern right away that elohim females must be very rare, and the probability of any male mating with one approaches zero.
"Now we come to the part that might be very difficult for one of our human guests to hear, because it treads on the religion and traditions of her own people. But the truth is there came a time when Binah came to me, and offered herself as my mate, so that I might know fatherhood, and that Belial might be thwarted, but primarily because Binah couldn't stand the thought of yielding sexually to Belial. Our lovemaking was the first battle in our war against Belial, and it was a terrible defeat for him.
"The offspring of Binah was the elohim you know as El, who quickened inside the yellow sun called Sol, and that was probably about thirty thousand years ago, but I cannot be certain. Time moves strangely for us.
"Now events are moving very quickly, and we hope Belial is near to his final judgment. I will ask the human male next to me to speak now. His name is Yeshua, and he is literally the most famous person who ever lived on the Earth. His Aramaic name was mangled first by the Greeks and after that by an evolving English language until it became 'Jesus' but that name, maybe, is more familiar to you."
"Thank you Ariel," Yeshua said. "And I also hope that our lady human guest will bear with me for a few more minutes and allow me to finish speaking my piece when her impulse might well be to get up right now and leave. Because she is thinking of her own people and the two thousand years of terrible suffering they endured at the hands of people who called themselves my fol- lowers, but were not, and never did I know them, because they blamed the Jews for my execution, and they remember when the high priest Caiaphas said, 'Let his blood be on our head, and the heads of our children,' but they forget my teaching that it is my blood which makes atonement.
"And I say to you, woman of the House of Israel, there will be an account- ing someday for all of their actions, if Belial is defeated, and we attain to the Elysian Fields."
The human woman said, "Do not fear to offend me, Yeshua, for since the days of the Fortuna Summit your Father El has spoken directly to me, and has set me aside as his prophet for these times, and I have no standing to hold you personally accountable, Holy One called Bat-El, for the terrible sins of those who called themselves your disciples."
"Thank you, servant of my Father. But it is true what Ariel just said, that the one you know as Yahweh or El had a beginning, and El was my mother, but my father was Belial. Yet I share a physical body with El, because he re- moved himself from a portion of the core of the sun (which is really rather small) to make room for me to come into being. And in this way we struck a second blow against Belial and brought a final end to his secret harem.
"I am called Yeshua in my human guise but my true name is Krista Bat-El and I am the only remaining female elohim in this line. But neither Belial nor Hyblo can breed with me, for I am truly one with Yahweh. The joy of our union is continuous and far greater than any fleeting joy of procreation. I alone among the countless elohim will never know motherhood, but that is a small price to pay to defeat Belial.
"Just as Chokhmah took on the flesh of a nephilim female named Ariel, I took on the flesh of a human male. What I mean by taking on flesh is the brain of our host was changed, and every cell was replaced, one by one, with a microscopic machine that mimicked the action of each brain cell perfectly, and then these machines were rewired to reflect the mind of the elohim who did the possession.
"Ariel was a full-grown yin when Chokhmah took her, and when Chokhmah-Ariel was tortured to death by Belial, Chokhmah did not take on flesh again for a long time. When I took human flesh, it was that of an infant, so there was no well-formed personality for me to merge with. I was fully myself: Bat- El.
"And when I was arrested at the contrivance of Belial I too was tortured to death and buried in a crypt. There over the course of forty hours my whole body was changed in the same way my brain had been changed to permit the possession. I lived again, and walked from the tomb to be seen by some of my good friends, then I journeyed to the Land We Know and I possess that same risen body to this day."
And Yeshua held up his wrists to display the nail hole in each one of them. "Yet my victory over death might be hollow after all," he said. "Both Yahweh and myself have become . . . unwell. We believe Belial is doing some- thing, but we are unable to discover what it is. Perhaps Binah would know what is happening, but he has not spoken to us for seven years, and we fear we are dying."
The human woman said, "In Torah and in the Old Buron there is mention of the 'angel of Yahweh' which went about with fire and smoke and landed on mountain summits. Could not El Shaddai send his angel to find out what Belial is doing to you and perhaps stop him?"
"Alas, no," Yeshua said. "The object called the angel of Yahweh was really the angel of Binah, which came to Earth by way of a wormhole. In the time when your forefathers journeyed from Egypt to Sinai El borrowed it the way you would borrow a truck, and later it was destroyed by Belial in the world war on Gorpai, in the same attack where Ariel lost Kandiel, and Binah never replaced it." He sighed.
Ariel said, "Now before we are taken as rude gods, we will stop talking about our human guest in the third person, and allow her to speak for her- self. Please welcome Karin Durr of Earth, who was born Lilith Gervasi, prophetess of El, wife of Robyn, head of security for the Femina Caelestis organization and formerly the commanding officer of Bravo Battalion in the Israel Defense Force."
There was a moment of low-voiced murmurings when her identity was revealed. Yes, Lilith had cut quite a swath in her time, and she was known even here more than four light-years away from Earth.
"Thank you Yeshua Bat-El. I will move directly to the news I carry, which might not have reached here yet, or if it did, only in a distorted version. Last year Emperor Azibeel Gerash assailed our city of Fortuna on the Moon with a carrier, a destroyer, sixteen troop transports, and about a hundred aircraft. I was not present in that battle because at the exact same time Azibeel caused the outbreak of yet another Arab-Israeli war, knowing I would choose to fight in that one and of course I could not be two places at the same time. I can say that ploy will never work again.
"I do not know why the nephilim are allowed to have a colony in the Solar System, perhaps someone here can enlighten me as to the give-and-take that led to that. But I do know they are not permitted to approach closer than four times the distance of the Earth from the sun, except for diplomatic envoys to ONE. And someone should have told Azibeel the four AU limit was not for our protection, but for hyz.
"Hy attacked with four hundred troops and was carried out by four troops. Hy could be dead now for all we know, or care. By all accounts hy wasn't looking very good after my old friend Hunky had her way with hym with her blade.
"During the battle, it was discovered that Azibeel had moved the mouth of the Ganymede wormhole, or rather, the ID Grid that anchors it, to within a million miles of Earth, to a libration point in line with the sun. Hy prob- ably attacked directly from Gorpai, and obviously intended to return directly to Gorpai, but hy was unable to do so because we destroyed the way- ward ID grid before hy could use it to escape. I presumed hy limped on to Jupiter after that. Who knows?
"I'm not here to apologize for anything. Hunky destroyed the ID structure because at the time Femina Caelestis was not yet prepared to take on the entire Centauri fleet, which surely would have followed after the Emperor's little setback. My message to hym? Try us again now. Try us again in a year or two and see what happens."
"Lilith, speaking for El and for myself," Yeshua assured her, "you were perfectly justified to destroy the marker for the wormhole. Sol is entirely our star system, after all, and Belial broke his agreement with us."
Lilith accepted this and moved on. "Yeshua, you and Ariel spoke of possessing people, and we also know something of that. Long ago a young woman named Kim Lokken was possessed by Binah in the same manner you describe. We call it the Change. It was mediated by something we call the Artifact."
Lilith turned from Yeshua to face the nephilim officers because her next point was very important. She said, "Long ago Binah forced a bargain with Belial. Binah gained complete access to the Library of Ull, which is the compilation of everything the trillions other elohim knew, spanning half the universe. but the price of that access was Binah's complete silence. Binah could never say a word to any other elohim that Belial had sealed off Chokhmah, Yahweh, and Krista from the greater community of their own kind. Even Binah was sealed off, in the sense that his access to the Li- brary of Ull was read-only.
"But there was a loophole in that bargain. Binah never agreed to keep hu- mans or nephilim or jen in the dark about all these things! And we planet- dwellers in turn were never obliged to remain silent to the other elohim. In that roundabout way, copies of the Buron got into the hands of Ariel and Yeshua, and from that moment they knew everything, even though Binah never said a word directly to them. Belial could do nothing about it, because it was his own shortsighted contempt for the abilities of us pathetic little planet-dwelling, chemistry-based lifeforms that caused him to leave us completely out of all his calculations. But it has been open warfare ever since.
"Now Robyn was not the last human being to engage in Possession, for what is Femina Caelestis but a time-share body-swapping scheme made possible by the Artifact? With a practical form of immortality the Girl Guard has be- come more fearsome than any army in our world's long, bloody history. We simply do not hesitate to move toward trouble, and if by some misfortune we run out of ammunition we hurl our own bodies at the enemy, knowing in the next instant as we experience it, we will be en-fleshed in a new body. Some members of Femina Caelestis have experienced the beauty and strength of perpetual youth in an endless series of lives.
"It was an experiment, and it failed. The soul of a woman is diluted by a factor of 71 percent with every incarnation. There are some women like Inge Hahn, who joined us early on, and who can no longer be found. Their memories have been scattered like ashes and distributed among us in such a way that they can never be regathered together to bring them back as a separate identity.
"Memories and personalties combine according to laws similar to that governing genetics, with recessive and dominant genes. And one dominant personality, Gina, has become like a cancer in the FC. We call the Ginas the Bunners, because they always tie their hair back in a bun.
"The Bunners are linked together in the Grid, of course, and if you ever saw two of them in once place it would creep you out because they move as though they were one person, and they often complete each other's sen- tences.
"The Bunners have grown to become forty percent of the whole Femina Caelestis. Older women are scattered to non-existence, and Bunners step in to take their place. Robyn saw this happening decades ago and met in secret with the rest of the Band and me, the Muscle. We agreed never to give up our bodies simply to get young ones, because the bodies we discarded would carry memories of our conspiracy, and the Bunners would be alerted far too early. We would only obtain new bodies in the event of our death.
"We called our conspiracy Project Hope, and it hinges on successfully developing artificial intelligence, an elusive dream for the last hundred years. We believe the secret is that an AI has to grow up as a human. It has to be so convincing that even the AI is fooled, let alone the people around it. And that requires a feat of robotics far beyond anything that has been attempted before. Robyn herself died to help make it happen."
Lilith held up a flat-pack. "I have Robyn's final memories here, and her wish is to delay her re-enfleshment until Project Hope bears fruit. Now we are on the cusp of success. In the suburbs of Puget Sound City on Earth there is a very expensive machine named Hope Felton who sincerely believes she is a real little girl."
"Hope has a working mind, yet it is completely software. We will make many copies of her mind in the Grid, all representing a single known baseline, and we will possess those artificial minds rather than real human ones.
"When we die, instead of blank periods of nothing between lives, we will live in the Grid. Our memories and dreams will greatly enrich the network. We will create our own virtual universe inside the Grid to live in, and if we choose to walk in the real world under the sun, we will fashion more robots like Hope.
"But the Artifact we will destroy, and never again will Femina Caelestis take possession of humans the way we have before. It will mean, of course, the end of the Bunners."
"I imagine that will spark a furious civil war within your organization," Lahatiel said.
Lilith's lips tightened. "There will be a . . . discernible reaction. I cannot rely on the Astrodyne fleet to assist in the proposed theft of Hope and the Artifact, of course. They are rotted right through with Bunners. But Major Rogziel came to us under a white flag, in the name of Emperor Azibeel, seeking passage to the Land We Know so that he might appraise Belial of the outcome of the Moon War, and in converse with hym we learned that we might find the aid we need if one of us followed hym through to the other side."
"General Gervasi," Rogziel said, "forgive my deception when I flashed my credentials from the Emperor. For Azibeel is dead, and that document was actually drafted by Thammuz hyz only son."
There was another spate of murmuring at Rogziel's news. The Emperor dead!
"It might provide you some satisfaction to know hy did not die quickly," Rogziel said with wry amusement. "Hy had burns over much of hyz body, and several cracked ribs. Hunky's blade started an infection in hyz intestines that never healed, even after the blood was staunched. Hy lingered for a number of days in unbelievable agony.
"There is nothing like excruciating pain to focus the ego of a possessing being," Yeshua said, shaking his head at the memory of his own crucifixion. "That is something Ariel and I both know from terrible experience. At that level of pain, it was not just Azibeel who suffered, but Belial possessing hym who suffered as well, to the exclusion of all else. To Belial, there would be nothing but the pain, yet hy could not contrive his own escape. That indeed is the very point of the existence of pain for you planet- dwellers, to re-order your priorities from a task-orientation to a survival orientation, and in Belial's case, after many centuries, the self who needed preservation was much more the possessee than the possessor."
Rogziel nodded in agreement and said, "We tried to keep Azibeel under sedation, but hy had to come up when his bandages were changed, and hy got to enjoy every minute of that. Hyz gut became bloated from out-gassing by the infecting bacteria that escaped from his colon into the rest of his abdomen, and this bent his cracked ribs outward and kept them from even begin- ning to heal. The smell alone was horrible! Every breath was a torment for hym. Oh yes, Azibeel paid, but almost worse than the pain was hyz shock when the carrier Trespasser arrived at the last known position of the ID Grid to make good our escape to Gorpai and nothing was there but an Astro- dyne warship with warm torpedo tubes. After that, I think, Azibeel lost all hope and succumbed to hyz overwhelming wall of injuries at last."
"The death of Azibeel should have released Belial the elohim from the pain's grip," Ariel said. "There was an instantaneous link between Belial and Azibeel, so the Belial we could see from here, the orange sun Agena which has now set, knows at this instant everything that you have told us."
"That is true, Lady Ariel, but Belial cannot know anything that transpired after the death of Azibeel. The communications officer on Trespasser, following hyz procedures, transmitted a contingency report to Palato, but it will take more than four years to arrive there. So what Belial does not yet know is that the son of Azibeel cremated the body of hyz father. Then Thammuz donned black armor and a mask that completely conceals hyz face and distorts hyz voice. Now hy holds forth that hy is Emperor Azibeel who must now wear a yang-portable iron lung to keep him alive and hide his disfigurement. He got the idea, strangely enough, from an old Earth science fiction film."
Lilith broke out into a spate of laughter. "So Thammuz is now literally the Dark Lord from the Galaxy's Fall trilogy? This is too rich!"
"Under the mask and armor, of course, he is a healthy young dirk who is actually very clever. It was Thammuz, you remember, who salvaged his fa- ther's mission by threatening to destroy the final memories of Dory."
"Yes, and Femina Caelestis will not rest until they avenge that," Lilith warned. "Not for the death of Dory, mind you, deaths are ten for a penny. But Thammuz threatened to cause her True Death and the FC will never for- give that. There must be an overreaction to create a deterrent against others trying it, or even thinking about trying it."
Rogziel shrugged, because he simply didn't care what happened to Thammuz. He said, "I alone know that Thammuz is posing as Azibeel, for I was his father's closest servant, and I aided Thammuz in creating his deception. The Imperial embassy to ONE he did not trust, and his first act as the boy em- peror was to order our ambassador to withdraw to Ganymede, ostensibly to protest the 'assault' on the person of the Emperor.
"Then Thammuz drafted a document using Azibeel's seal naming me as the Emperor's lone representative. He commanded me to approach Femina Caelestis and exercise the diplomatic privilege of passage through their physical link to the Land We Know. I was to return to Gorpai as soon as possible and tell Belial, through his angel which guards Gorpai at the heart of the fleet, that Thammuz had assumed the Imperial throne in the Sol system, and would proceed with his father's plan to slay Yahweh and Krista. For otherwise even Belial would be in the dark for a number of years."
"I told Thammuz I didn't think the document he drafted would be accepted by Femina Caelestis as diplomatic credentials. So he put the Imperial seal on a blank document, and told me to fill it in however I chose. That is how much he trusts me. The blank document is here, and I yield it up to you, Lady Chokhmah, for it might prove useful. At the very least it attests that what I say is true."
"Thank you, Major Rogziel." And after she and Krista examined it, they passed the blank but signed document to Commodore Lahatiel.
Rogziel continued. "Now for many years a vast mobile fortress called the Grand Imperial Citadel has been under construction in orbit above Mercury, and has consumed the greater part of the ores processed there, and the thousands of launch lasers on that planet serve to protect it from any at- tack by Femina Caelestis, or even from surveillance. Astrodyne still serves to carry the overflow for sale elsewhere, because that remains an important source of solyad for General Materials, but Astrodyne's freight- ers must adhere to specific flight plans or they will face those lasers."
"We learned that first-hand," Lilith said. "It was, in fact, how Robyn-Bi- nah was most recently killed."
Rogziel said, "The Empire has profited from the use of macros for propulsion, under license from Astrodyne, but Emperor Azibeel always suspected that you retained the ability to kill the macros from a distance if they were ever turned against you in open war. This was confirmed by the death of Punisher recently in the Battle of Luna. No, Azibeel needed more free- dom than that. He needed invulnerable macros to power the Grand Imperial Citadel and all the warships of the fleet that would protect it. Yet every macro you lease is tamper-proof. It will destroy itself before offering up its secrets. That was the reason for the invasion of your Moon, to obtain a partially-built macro and break your monopoly, and in that, Thammuz did succeed.
"Even now, the former ambassador to ONE is enroute to Jupiter carrying that single half-built macro to the naval engineers at Europa, thinking that a masked and armored Emperor Azibeel has commanded it. Thammuz, meanwhile has journeyed to Mercury aboard Trespasser, and when Bat-El says she and El are dying, I fear that Thammuz has put the GIC into operation early. It is a star killer, you see, and we have little time."
"I'd like to apologize to you, Major Rogziel" Barakiel said, "for I see now that I have wronged you in my own thoughts. I will be honored to serve with you on this mission."
"Thank you, Captain, but I will not be riding with you beyond Palato. I will report to Belial and carry out Thammuz' orders after all, but not precisely in the way he intended." Rogziel smiled at the thought. "A few well-placed lies to Belial can do a lot of damage to his cause, and there are things I can say and put into motion that will smooth the way for the Exiler."
"What if he suspects something and puts you to torment?"
"Belial is now cut off from Sol. He will be hungry for my news, but if things go sour do not fear betrayal, because I will face Belial prepared with a cyanide capsule in my mouth. The Eyes of Belial will never set their hooks into me alive. And is it not true, Lady Ariel, that there are crucial elements of your mission that I do not know, and won't be revealed to any- one until later?"
"Yes, that is true, Major Rogziel," she said, shaking her head sadly. "It must be so. I do honor your willingness to take your risk, and it is an important part of our plan, but any of number of things could happen. The Eyes of Belial could find the cyanide capsule before you meet Belial. The capsule could fail to work, you could bite it incorrectly, or even accidentally swallow it, taking hours to die instead of minutes. Or you could be captured unexpectedly in the days after reporting to Belial, when you are fleeing to safety in the Land We Know. And if that happens there is no god who can help you, because your nerves are a living electrical system, and the Eyes of Belial are master electricians. Do you still wish to take the risk, Major?"
Rogziel lowered his eyes and smiled wanly. "I do, and I understand your concerns. I will defer to your greater wisdom, Ariel who is Chokhmah, whose very name means wisdom."
Ariel smiled back at him and turned to face the five candidate officers.
Sha said, "The Imperial frigate Exiler is to set out on her maiden voyage. Her first mission is to take all of your loved ones to safety far from the reach of the Eyes of Belial. Lilith, I invite you to serve on this ship as well. This crew will aid you in bringing your Project Hope to a successful completion, and you will no doubt be a vital asset for Commodore Lahatiel.
"But your primary quest is to investigate this 'star-killer' Major Rogziel spoke of, and somehow stop Belial from killing El and Bat-El. If you six officers accept this quest, then stand fast. Otherwise, please depart the ship at this time, and go with my good grace."
No one made a move to leave, not even Kushiel, who had expressed reservations earlier about becoming disloyal to Belial. But everyone felt Ariel was overlooking something important.
Ariel clapped har hands. "Excellent! Thanks to all of you. And Lilith, welcome aboard."
"I am honored to serve, Lady Ariel," Lilith said. "At the very least, it should prove interesting. But I have no idea how we intend to get back to the Sol system with the wormhole down."
Yeshua said, "The wormhole is not 'down' but it's drifting free and there's no way for anyone to find it from that end. We could still send a ship through from this side, but large wormholes take at least three elohim to conjure up. Binah is on hiatus for now. Belial would wonder why El or myself were helping Binah and Chokhmah to send yet another warship through and you would be detained. But we think there might be another way."
Ariel concluded then. "More on that can not be said at this time. The Commodore will make all the arrangements concerning your pay and status, Lilith. It might be the case that you will have to go undercover as a nephilim female rather than a human one, since the two sides seem to be in a state of war, but I leave that for Lahatiel to decide. Trust hym even as I do, hy is a good yang!
"For the rest of you, I invite you now to gather your loved ones together on this ship for an evening meal, and make some sort of temporary accommodations for them as best as you can. It may be crowded on this ship at the beginning, but the flight to Menkal will be short."
Commodore Lahatiel cried out once more, "Attention on deck!" and all the officers, including Lilith, stood at attention. Then Ariel and Yeshua made their swift departure with no further words spoken.
Soon the two divinities were nowhere to be found anywhere at Hybla-Dia. The floating grassy rock where Exiler was anchored was the location of a fold-space door leading to the Land We Know. They negotiated the network of cables lacing the micro-moon and entered a small stone booth nearby.
Under gravity once more, Ariel and Yeshua emerged within the Temple of Chokhmah near Kochad in the Kingdom of Alodra as easily as moving from one room to another.
