Eucharist for a Sinless Mankind

by Bertil Falk

Chapter 1: The Bureau of Salvation

part 1 of 3; section 2 of 3

Urbanus Collectus sat unsteadily on the opposite side of the pasemite desk floating in the middle of the room. Then he looked straight into the triangular eyes of the stocky matron from Bavaria. ”Mervil Tojas is of the opinion that I should join the bureau as your assistant for the problem in question.”

“You say that. Well. We have vacant cells and you may have one of them. But it doesn’t explain the hurry. Unless the truth is that Mervil Tojas wants at all costs to get rid of you as soon as possible.”

Brother Urbanus turned red and the cardinal felt called upon to give him an encouraging flip on his nose. This unexpected indiscretion caused him to blush even more. In his capacity as a Celibateur, who stuck strictly to the rules of his Order, he apprehended every bodily contact — no matter how trifling it was — with another being of whatever kind or sex it might be, as a grave sin, even if the being was of a neuter or a non-neuter gender from some obscure planet situated somewhere in the direction of the Southern Cross.

He knew he was inexperienced in human relations. He had always been retiring. It was not only shyness; it was a natural form of timidity, a condition within his spirit. He was not at all happy of being thrown by Cardinal Tojas into the part of the Church where reality took the form of practical problems, diplomatic actions, and bodily touch. Being told to walk straight into the kind of reality raging outside the walls stirred up dust clouds of dread within him. But his Church called for obedience, and he obeyed.

There was no scope for question marks inside the safe monastery cell. The very presence of this woman of a race from outer space carried the seed of doubts.

Terror-stricken, he dismissed the blasphemous thought and sought consolation in facts. Thomas had doubted and wanted tangible proof that Jesus had risen from the dead. Brother Urbanus would himself never get the opportunity to put his hand into the wound of Christ.

Three times before the cock crowed, Peter had denied he knew his Lord. Brother Urbanus could himself make no such denial, since there were no crowing cocks in existence. He did not even know what a cock was or what crowing meant.

Thomas had suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Brahmins in Chennai and Peter had insisted upon being crucified upside down, since he considered himself unworthy of being crucified in the same manner as Jesus. They had loved God more than they had loved themselves. Would he even be able to love himself?

But the shade of this pitiable doubt was only thrown for a fraction of a second on his firm faith. He looked at Mother Saulcerite with fear. His anguish squeezed a bead of perspiration on his naked forehead.

The fact that the young man would stay at the Bureau caused Cardinal Saulcerite to change her decision to skip vespers. “Let’s postpone our discussion till later,” she said and smiled at him or at least in his direction.

It was a “smile” that caused a cold shiver to run through the poor Celibateur. He had not even seen a being of the opposite sex since his ordination, and now he felt himself a subject of sheer seduction by this woman, famous all over the universe for her boldness and ability to handle threatening problems.

“Come along now. It’s time for vespers, and I don’t want to miss the prayers.”

Mother Saulcerite rocked along the corridor with the literalist Celibateur in tow.

Like a whirlpool in a drain, the Cardinal swept along down a steep spiral staircase that led to a small room where a number of hundred-meter long tunnels opened. Their walls were whitewashed and illuminated by a bank of burning wax candles. The tunnel led to another winding staircase and Saulcerite climbed agilely upwards.

Brother Urbanus had trouble keeping up with her, and he was panting when they ultimately walked out into the church from behind the thick pillar that embraced the stairway. They arrived at the moment when the priest was opening the doors of the altar, turning to the Madonna and uttering the words “God, have mercy on me.”

With a bow towards the congregation, he once more turned to the altar, took the Bible and raised it towards God on high.

“The Lord Bless us and keep us,” a layman said, and the priest, a red, chequered Sirius-orthodox bladfamarang from a planet near the Southern Cross, was quick to agree, saying: “Blessed is the kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Now and forever in all eternity.”

Now the choir added a full stop with a sententious “Amen!”

The Cardinal and her newly acquired co-worker joined in the appeal: “Come, let us pray and worship God, our King. Come, let us fall down for Christ, our King and God.”

Thereupon, the believing Lesbians’ variant form followed: “Blessed be the Queendom of the Mother and the Daughter and The Holy Female Spirit. Now and always and in the eternity of eternities.”

Once more the choir came out with a powerful “Amen!”

Even though the Greens — having their origin as a kind of a Christian environmental movement in the past on Earth — embraced the slightly heretical idea that the Holy Ghost was green not by color but in consistency, this old revivalist movement was permitted to stay within the Church. A choir of Greens struck up their confession: “I believe in the Holy Ghost, a greenly structured Ghost.”

Thus, the old-fashioned wordings resounded in the church. The vespers proceeded. The congregation consisted of priests and lay people of all possible orders of nuns and monks and of neither nuns nor monks. They represented thousands of genders of all thinkable and unthinkable mankinds, gathered from all over the known universe. In accord they furnished the room with antiphonies, hallalelujahs and amens.

The different parts were mixed with the five-dimensional stereophony of the reptiles from Galtrism, who brought forth their parts orally, mentally, genitally, and analogously as well as digitally. Above all this, the transparent nuns from Gutta floated. They mixed themselves with the movements that rested heavily on the premises.

A giant statue of the Madonna with her infant, illuminated by hundreds of wax candles, dominated the front and constituted the altar while the crucifixion was allotted a more remote spot in the form of a triumph crucifix hanging above the western sanctuary.

To be continued...

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