Chapter 19

Intrepid - 3754 A.D.

Naked and hairless. The shame of it. Isaac had never been so since he was a baby. The humiliation was torment in itself.

But Isaac could comfort himself that he wasn't the only one so demeaned. All around him and equally immobilised on the grassy lawns of this strange Elysian but Godless world were others like him: defeated, dishonoured and similarly paralysed. He could move his eyes. He could breathe. But he couldn't move his limbs and he could mouth words with only the greatest effort.

He was comforted by the scriptures that said in Chapter Thirty-two Verses Twenty-five and Twenty-six of the Second Book of Moses: Called Exodus: "And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies:) Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him". Surely the Lord would see Isaac's similar shame and rescue him. He would know that Isaac's faith remained strong.

Nonetheless, Isaac could see little evidence of the Lord's intervention and rather more of a flurry of efficient robotic activity. Peculiar-shaped metal and plastic objects flew about the verdant landscape herding away the deer, horse and antelope and tidying up the wreckage left by the Holy Crusaders' abortive invasion. Military officers of the Interplanetary Union strode amongst the robots. These included women of whom many were immodestly dressed. Isaac had never before seen so many bare legs and naked midriffs. Many soldiers had shaved heads and some had very unnatural skin colour. Only Satan could father abominations with green, violet or even striped skin.

A handful of military personnel were crouched over and attending the forlorn crusaders who were slumped ignobly on the ground. Isaac guessed that these were medical officers by virtue of the dispassionate and clinical nature of their attention. They attended to each crusader individually with hand-held devices that were studied more intently than the patient himself. One or two crusaders were carried away by stretcher-bearing robots. Isaac could only speculate what cruel torments awaited these unfortunates.

It didn't take long until it was Isaac's turn. A thin scantily-clad woman crouched over him. She wore a silver one-piece uniform that displayed her legs below the knee and was open almost to her bosom. She skimmed a smooth plastic device several centimetres above his chest. Her head was shaved and she showed as little interest in him as a man would another man. She plucked his penis between her fingers with clinical disdain and probed his anus with the same non-intrusive device. She then spoke in a language that Isaac didn't recognise, but it wasn't Isaac she was addressing but instead a small device attached to her bosom.

Isaac feared that he would be one of those dragged away by the robots for further interrogation and, no doubt, torture, but the woman left him where he lay and strode off to repeat the same procedure on another crusader. She showed no interest in Isaac beyond that required to perform her duty.

As the crusaders remained where they were, the robots continued to mop up the wreckage caused by the abortive invasion. The scattered remains of Isaac's pod, still less than half a kilometre away, were collected and removed by robots that were almost entirely composed of articulated arms and broad wheels. Small sniffer robots scurried about to gather the smaller debris. Within hours there was no evidence that a battle of any kind had ever taken place. The huge flat screens that hovered well out of reach above the crusaders' heads appeared to be windows into other worlds, but all Isaac could see were holographic representations of the same empty space he'd observed from within the descending pod.

Isaac reflected on the words of the Lord in Chapter Six, Verses Ten and Eleven, of the Book of Job: "Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off! Then should I yet have comfort; yea, I would harden myself in sorrow: let him not spare; for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One." Job had suffered great hardship but was proven worthy, as Isaac hoped he would soon also be.

After a while, the flurry of activity was reduced to simply the sight of a few hovering robots that one by one floated off over the curvature of the ground and beyond his sight. The huge columns the crusaders had been so desperate to secure retracted upwards so that there were now no accessible stairways or escalators to other levels.

Then Isaac noticed that several of his fellow crusaders were hesitantly staggering onto their feet in a landscape now clear of animals, robots or atheist soldiers.

Isaac flexed the muscles of his arm still expecting to experience the same paralysis that allowed him to twitch his fingers or wriggle his toes but nothing more. This time his efforts were more successful. The force that had pinned him to the ground had disappeared and he could clamber to his feet. He might be tingling with cramp, but at least he was standing. Only now, like all his comrades, he was hairless, even to the extent of his crotch and armpits and, worst of all, totally naked.

His priority was still as it had been before. He had a mission to fulfil. The need to overpower the atheists and seize their vessel remained the imperative for the Godly and Righteous. But he also needed to follow the example of Adam and Eve and hide his nakedness. Isaac hoped that there might be some fig leaves available. Unfortunately, not only were there no leaves or garments to be seen but there were also no weapons with which he could arm himself and pursue his crusade.

A flat screen floated just a metre above his head. There was writing on it, but it was in a script he couldn't decipher. It was replaced by other equally incomprehensible icons and then by script he recognised but whose words he did not. And then, in English, he read: "This way for food and lodgings." Next to these words was an arrow that hovered beside the screen. Although it appeared to be solid and tangible it was in actual fact a hologram. It pointed in a different direction to the arrows that accompanied the words in other scripts.

Isaac was wary of accepting favours from atheists, but he decided that the arrow might direct him to where he might meet other English speakers and perhaps others of his and, therefore, the only true faith.

Isaac walked in the arrow's direction and with his hands cupped over his genitals as the only way he could see of maintaining his modesty. Other crusaders were also converging on the same route whose direction was further reinforced by other arrows that were suspended in space beside a succession of hovering screens. When he looked forward in the direction of the arrow the words were displayed in English. If he looked in any other direction the symbols and language changed and a different arrow appeared. It seemed that all English speakers were being coaxed in one direction and other language speakers elsewhere. The atheists were differentiating the crusaders not in terms of their faith, but purely by the language they spoke. English was the language of the King James' Bible and therefore the true language of the Lord. Where English-speakers gathered so too would other true believers of the Christian faith.

Just how big was the atheists' ship? Isaac wondered when he had walked several kilometres and was still not at his destination. He was tired and hungry, so the appeal of the promised food and lodgings steadily increased however much he reminded himself that his first duties were to protect his modesty and to destroy the Apostasy. This second duty, after all, was the reason why he'd travelled so far from Mercury's orbit.

A hairless naked man approached him, also cupping his genitals in his hands. He was as fearful of Isaac as Isaac was of him. "Art thou of the faith of the Holy Trinity?" the stranger asked in what even after all his bible study seemed to Isaac a peculiarly archaic English dialect.

"I am that," said Isaac. "In fact I herald from the colony of Holy Trinity."

The man was confused. "Thou art a follower of the word of the Lord, but not of the exact word, in sooth. Thy tongue is near heathen. But here there are heretics and apostates aplenty and I must pardon thy errant ways."

"As I must yours," said Isaac with more conciliation than he would have previously entertained. "You follow the word as written in the gospels..."

"The exact and unvarying word," corrected the man.

" ... And in this atheist world such faith is worth more than any heretical deviation."

"Well said," agreed the man, comforted that there was common ground between them.

The two naked men walked onwards together both diligently hiding their genitals, as were the other crusaders. They engaged in a dialogue liberally peppered with quotations from the Holy Scripture. Isaac discovered that his comrade came from the colony of Divine Truth between the orbits of Jupiter and the Asteroid Belt which maintained the doctrine that King James was the actual author of the Authorised Version and was therefore Divinely Inspired. He was a Presbyterian who also believed that the small independent Kingdom of Scotland (now a republic) was the Promised Land.

Isaac was better informed, of course. He knew that the King James Bible wasn't actually written by the first King of the United Kingdom of Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales, but rather by his scribes. It was they, not His Majesty, who were divinely inspired and who corrected many of the heresies of the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and Calvinist faiths. However, he shared with Elijah the belief that the word revealed in these texts, not those in Latin or Greek, were the exact ones of the Lord God, even where there were apparent misspellings.

Isaac and his companion eventually arrived at a glade beneath some tall trees and beside a collection of villas. Each one was stripped of the clutter of domestic life that Isaac saw in his brief foray into a similar building when he was armed and considerably more dangerous. Under the trees was a long table on which was presented a sumptuous array of dishes and where some crusaders were already dining.

Isaac and Elijah had made a pact to resist the temptation of gifts provided by the atheists. Surely only evil could come from evil. As it is said in Chapter Seven, Verse Fifteen, of the Gospel According to Saint Matthew: "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." But when Isaac saw that the other crusaders had already sampled the repast and showed no sign of having been poisoned, he decided that there was really little choice. In any case, he was very hungry. He could decline the feast but then he would only die from starvation. If the food poisoned him, this would merely hasten his arrival at St Michael's Golden Gates. Isaac was also surprised by how good the food tasted, however simple and plain it appeared to be. There was rice, bread, boiled vegetables and greens, and they were all remarkably fresh and lightly seasoned. Isaac had never tasted such wholesome and appetising food before: either on Holy Trinity or since. The vegetables tasted far better than those he'd cultivated in his garden under the colony's dim lights. There were also foods from the Holy Land that rarely featured in Isaac's diet such as olives, figs and dates. The repast sinfully reminded Isaac of the manna bestowed on the refugees from Egypt on their way to Israel.

The atheist dogs had also provided many comfortable beds on which Isaac and the other crusaders could sleep but which also lacked sheets or blankets to cover their nakedness. In a sense, such covering wasn't strictly needed as the temperature aboard the Intrepid was very comfortable.

Isaac hesitated about resting on a mattress and not only because each one was in such close proximity to the next in the villa's otherwise empty rooms. Then there was a light shower of rain which persisted for many minutes but miraculously failed to fall on the table on which the repast was laid. Isaac needed shelter and he needed to rest. He debated whether it would be sinful for him to sleep naked. He wasn't sure his genitals mightn't be exposed when he was asleep. But when Isaac lay down on a mattress he was so exhausted that sleep overcame him almost immediately.