Read Online Fear that man by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online Page B

then; they were the dreams of a being obsessed with demon-persecution.”
        Sam’s mind whirled in a nighmare landscape of doubt and nearly unconquerable mountains of unbelief. “And the machines were not machines at all, for God is not the Father of the machine. God is the Father of life, the Father of man who makes the machines. God could imitate the exterior of a machine, but the only way He could make it work was to create a life form-the jelly-mass-to imitate the workings of one. He knows us, physically, but He doesn’t know what we have within us.”
        “And God feared machines because they were something above His abilities. He feared the Mues and chose to ignore their existence in your training because they were things beyond His powers-the results of men usurping His rights.”
        “A thousand years,” Breadloaf muttered.
        “How could you stand it?” Gnossos asked, turning from the Shield. “How could you sit there, knowing?”
        “Sometimes, after I had left here and gone into the streets and smelled the fresh air, I thought I could never come back. But when I thought of how much worse it would be if He ever escaped…”
        “Of course,” Gnossos said sympathetically. “For a thousand years, men have grown gradually saner, have broken communications with their barbaric past. It’s all because He’s been trapped in your warped dimension tank and can’t influence anything. Isn’t that it?”
        Breadloaf sighed. He was able to make fists of his hands now, and he sat exercising them. “That’s it exactly. My father thought he could enslave the Prisoner and make Him work for the family. We knew who He was. He wasted no time in telling us that, in demanding to be set free. But we could not master Him. It became clear that we could never let Him out. At first, of course, it was for the family’s safety. He could, and would, wipe out every Breadloaf. Then, after a few hundred years, when we saw what the empire was becoming, how much better it seemed, how much saner were the councils of man, we realized that much of the ugliness of life had been God’s doing. We had even stronger reasons for keeping Him locked up. If He were ever released”-Breadloaf wriggled an arm at last-“war would come again. Famine as we have never known it. Pestilence. Disease. We have but one choice: keep Him contained.”
        “Correction, please. You have no choice but to release Him!”
        The voice drew their attention to the door. A man stood there-a Christian judging from his beard. There were a dozen others standing behind him, dirty, unshaven, dressed in the rags of self-denial. One of them was the sign-carrier Gnossos had argued with in the streets what seemed like an eternity ago. He was smiling now, sans sign. He stepped into the room. “Isn’t it strange whom God should choose as His liberators?”
        “How did they-” Breadloaf began, struggling against his stiff body.
        “I told them!” Sam shouted. The series of hypnotic orders flashed through his memory now. What God had ordered him to do was a burning clarity. He recited the posthypnotic commands that had followed their landing on Hope: “Find a temple and tell the Christians that God is being held prisoner by the Breadloaf family in the Breadloaf Building; I will give you flames upon your tongue as a sign to convince them. In a Sell-All Hardwaremat, purchase these chemicals and pieces of equipment: ester of glycerin, nitric acid, a watch, a spool of number twenty-six copper wire, and a small construction detonator. Next prepare a bomb of glyceryl tinitrate. Next, break into the Breadloaf Building, plant the bomb by force pump A3A45 in the basement. Next, render Alexander Breadloaf III helpless via drug darts.” He had told the Christians then. They were here on his word.
        “It isn’t your fault,” Gnossos said.
        Then the echo of an explosion rumbled through the floors of the building, shook the walls. The