The Divine Invasion Read Online Free PDF

"You don't seem to enjoy it."
    "It's interfering with my life."
    She said, "So am I."
    To that he could think of no response; it was true.
    "What do you normally do all the time?" Rybys asked. "Lie in your bunk listening to the Fox? The foodman told me that; is it true? That doesn't sound to me like much of a life."
    Anger touched him, a weary anger. He was tired of defending his life-style. So he said nothing.
    "I think what I'll lend you first," Rybys said, "is C. S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain . In that book he—"
    "I read Out of the Silent Planet ," Asher said.
    "Did you like it?"
    "It was OK."
    Rybys said, "And you should read The Screwtape Letters . I have two copies of that."
    To himself, Asher thought, Can't I just watch you slowly die, and learn about God from that? "Look," he said. "I am Scientific Legate. The Party. You understand? That's my decision; that's the side I found. Pain and illness are something to be eradicated, not understood. There is no afterlife and there is no God, except maybe a freak ionospheric disturbance that's fucking up my equipment here on this dipshit mountain. If when I die I find out I'm wrong I'll plead ignorance and a bad upbringing. Meanwhile I'm more interested in shielding my cables and eliminating the interference than I am in talking  back and forth with this Yah. I have no goats to sacrifice and anyway I have other things to do. I resent my Fox tapes being ruined; they are precious to me and some of them I can't replace. Anyhow God doesn't insert such phrases as 'your behind' in otherwise beautiful songs. Not any god I can imagine."
    Rybys said, "He's trying to get your attention."
    "He would do better to say, 'Look, let's talk.'"
    "This apparently is a furtive life form. It's not isomorphic with us. It doesn't think the way we do."
    "It's a pest."
    Rybys said, pondering, "It may be modifying its manifestations to protect you."
    From what?"
    From it." Suddenly she shuddered wildly, in evident pain. "Oh goddam it! My hair is falling out!" She got to her feet. "I have to go back to my dome and put on that wig they gave me. This is awful. Will you go with me? Please ?"
    He thought, I don't see how someone whose hair is falling out can believe in God. "I can't," he said. "I just can't go with you. I'm sorry. I don't have any portable air and I have to person my equipment. It's the truth."
    Gazing at him unhappily, Rybys nodded. Apparently she believed him. He felt a little guilty, but, more than that, he experienced overwhelming relief that she was leaving. The burden of dealing with her would be off him, at least for a time. And perhaps if he got lucky he could make the relief permanent. If he had any prayer at all it was, I hope I never see her enter this dome again. As long as she lives.
    A pleased sense of relaxation stole over him as he watched her suit up for the trip back to her dome. And he inquired of himself which of his trove of Fox tapes he would play when Rybys and her cruel verbal snipings had departed, and he would be free again: free to be what he truly was, the connoisseur of the undying lovely. The beauty and perfection toward which all things moved: Linda Fox.
----
    That night as he lay sleeping a voice said softly to him, "Herbert, Herbert."
    He opened his eyes. "I'm not on standby," he said, thinking it was the mother ship. "Dome Nine is active. Let me sleep."
    "Look," the voice said.
    He looked—and saw that his control board, which governed all his communications gear, was on fire. "Jesus Christ," he said, and reached for the wall switch that would turn on the emergency fire extinguisher. But then he realized something. Something perplexing. Although the control board was burning, it was not consumed.
    The fire dazzled him and burned his eyes. He shut his eye and put his arm over his face. "Who is it?" he said.
    The voice said, "It is Ehyeh."
    "Well," Herb Asher said, amazed. It was the deity of the mountain, speaking to him openly, without an electronic