Systemic Shock by Dean Ing

Author:Dean Ing [Ing, Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-04-05T07:00:00+00:00

He took his time phrasing the question, a legacy from taking courses via library holo terminals. "Are they Mormons?"

"No!" Her knee-jerk response surprised Palma herself. She chuckled, peered guiltily at Quantrill, then back to her work. "Well, actually some of them think they are. I could make the same claim, Ted. I was raised LDS, but after my husband began trying to be a closet polygamist I backslid to a jack-Mormon, and then—" Shrug. "No, you can't be a Mormon and deny the tenets of the Apostles. Or the revelations of the modern Prophets. But a lot of people have their own revelations, and these days a lot of those are nightmarish. That can be a strong divisive force if it happens to a particularly devout man."

"Or woman."

"All males may become priests, even blacks," she said. She added with a trace of bitterness, "Females can never attain priesthood. Honor, veneration, service, yes; priest hood, no. You wouldn't believe the underclothes a Mormon woman's supposed to have, and I won't burden you with that. If a woman complains too much, she's put on a sort of probation—'disfellowship', they call it. Nice, hm? Or they just excommunicate you. I didn't wait for that final rejection."

"Maybe I shouldn't be asking you—"

"Ask away, whatthehell," she said as if sealing some internal bargain.

"Why do they raid other people? I thought Mormons had food and stuff all socked away."

She silenced the labeler, fixed him with a firm gaze. "They do. I repeat, these guerrillas aren't true Mormons. Of course they take terrible chances driving like maniacs through fallout, and some of them will be sorry. Some of them are just banditti, out for loot, but some honestly think they're bringing the gospel. The cars they steal, the churches they burn, are all part of their saintly splinter-group zeal to stamp out heretics. And there are in-betweeners who aren't above collecting some riches on the way to Heaven. Reminds me a little of the devout conquistadors of the Sixteenth Century."

As the labeler began ticking away again, Quantrill put some other labels—political labels from newscasts—together. "Let me guess; a heretic is anybody who doesn't wear a Collier button."

"'Pull through with Collier'," she quoted the campaign slogan. "Collier's a good man, for my money; he publicly disavows the cults, but they may intimidate a lot of people from the polls. You can't expect police to control them all. I'm inclined to think Governor Street is fighting an uphill battle, even here in his own home state."

The ex-Governor of Texas was also an ex-Major General, whose current position as Undersecretary of State bolstered his .claim as potential commander-in-chief of a besieged country. But fairly or not, James Street was saddled and hagridden by blame for a war which had come while his party was in power.

"At least all the networks seem to like Street," Quantrill said.

"Of course they do; they don't like censorship, and an LDS Apostle in White House Central will lean in that direction."

"Who needs holovision? Seems to me if you read the Book of Mormon, you know what's gonna happen anyway.

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