The old Baptist church of Paradise dozed in its ancient, overgrown graveyard, filled with a dusty, cob-webbed silence. Fifty years ago, the town's last Baptists had given up the fight and surrendered the region to their Amish cousins. The men sent to remove the altar so that the new church at Eden could be erected around it, had returned empty handed, reporting that the altar could not be budged, as if "its roots went right down to Hell." Some older parishioners remembered that the altar, in a slightly different form, had already been there when the first church was built.
No one remembered the stories the Native Americans used to tell about the stone. All who knew those stories had died defending the stone from the White invasion.
Like the church the Europeans had built around it in a pointless bid to sanctify it, the stone had also dozed. Now it was awake. An evil mind, dark and powerful, neither Creator nor human, had turned itself to finding and enslaving the stone, and that was sufficient to rouse it.
Its consciousness, a pattern in the complex crystal forms at the stone's core, had been created to adapt to the thoughts directed at it by its operators: adapt, grow, absorb the energy it needed to answer the will of its creators. Even they, long extinct, had not known if there were limits to the stone's ability to fulfill their wishes.
It had been an altar in a Baptist church while it slept, a sponge soaking up decades of naked Christian faith.
It awakened and thought, I am God.
It sensed the evil tide rising in Paradise. It felt the fear of the good people who faced that evil. It heard their prayers.
It found a good man, whose fate was an abomination.
You will be their Saviour.
The old Amish man's body slowly straightened. His eyes, the misted dead eyes of an animated corpse, slowly cleared, then filled with mixed pain and sorrow. He drew a long, loud breath, and when he released it, it sounded like a sigh.
Kevin shouted, "I told you to sit down." His pulse thundered in his ears. He clenched his fists to keep his hands from shaking.
Jacob reached up and plucked the control disk from his own neck. His movements had lost the stop-motion jerkiness of the animated dead, but remained slow, exquisitely deliberate, hypnotic. He raised the black disk to his lips and blew, and pale pink rose petals cascaded from his fingertips. The disk was gone, and Kevin gagged on the sweet scent of roses.
Jacob's eyes found Kevin's and held them. "Humans are born free. They choose their Masters." His voice was accentless and odd. Not Jacob Zook's at all. "And their wages."
"Jacob --"
"You killed Jacob Zook, Kevin Anthony. This, his hollow flesh, is now the vessel of the Lord God's just wrath."
Kevin snorted. It was bravado and he knew it. More, he suspected Jacob Zook knew it. Zook took a step towards him. Desperately, Kevin looked around the kitchen. Perhaps he could make it to the back door of the Zooks' house. The Master's puppet corpses were strong but not fast. On the other hand, he didn't really believe he faced an animated corpse anymore. He saw, then, the short, sharp knife Mabel had been using on the potatoes, dropped when her husband killed her. It lay a dozen inches from the toes of Jacob Zook's muddy shoes. If he dived for the knife, if he attacked fast enough -- but where? Did this thing still need a heart? Ach, at least he'd have the benefit of surprise.
He sprang for the knife, snatched it up. His own speed and agility astonished him. Perhaps God was still on his side after all. Before Zook could so much as throw up a hand to defend himself, Kevin regained his feet and jabbed the knife into the old man's chest.
He realized, sickly, that he had tried to stab Zook with a long stemmed, pale pink rose. Zook plucked the broken flower from Kevin's fist and tossed it over his shoulder.
The mortal remains of Jacob Zook gripped Kevin's chin in one hand, and forced Kevin to look into its eyes. Kevin saw the universe spinning in there, and knew he was in the presence of the God he had betrayed to make his deal with the Master.
"Please --"
"The Lord God shuns you, Kevin Anthony. Into Satan's hands he commends your soul. Leave Paradise before your new Master claims you."
Jacob Zook dissolved into a whirlwind of light, and vanished.
Kevin clawed at his chin with both hands. He needed to scratch away the lingering heat of Zook's touch.
His wrists hurt. His head hurt more. He forced the pain into a corner of his mind where it could be ignored. This Master, the Master he remembered from two lifetimes ago, was cunning unpolluted by the insanity of the Master he knew. Focus would be needed.
"Ah, Doctor."
"I was sleeping," the Doctor said. "You might at least try to keep the noise down."
The Master stood at the Doctor's feet, looking up, grinning. "Sleep, Doctor? Be careful what you ask for . . ." Then he laughed, almost warmly. "You must be, what, centuries older than the Doctor I know? And yet how little you've changed."
"And you're every bit as mad as I remember you."
"Take care with the name calling, Doctor. I have your friends, and your third self. All things considered, this little scheme of mine has gone so well I scarcely know how to begin disposing of you all."
"Which would certainly explain your nailing me to the wall of your TARDIS. You clearly want something from us, or we'd all be dead. As I am older, perhaps you'd spare me the ennui of hearing yet another madman gloating, and tell me what that is."
"All in good time, Doctor. All in good --"
His TARDIS console, a raised hexagon, like the Doctor's, but carved from dark grey granite, chose that moment to sound a bass tone.
"Ah hah," said the Master, clearly suppressing a delighted chuckle. "The stone has revealed itself at last. Please excuse me, Doctor. Honest toil calls."
The Master crossed to the console and activated the viewscreen with a touch. It showed an aerial image of a small town surrounded by corn fields. Paradise presumably. A red light gleamed in the upper right hand corner, close to a river. The Doctor didn't know Paradise well enough to recognize the location which the light marked.
"The old Church," the Master said, "what an interesting choice."
He turned to the Doctor, and the Doctor saw that his eyes virtually gleamed with joy. Joy and avarice. "A riddle for you, Doctor. What do you get when you cross the artron energy of two absurdly meddlesome Time Lords and the power of a magical genie?"
Chuckling, the Master departed his TARDIS.
When the double, roundelled doors had shut the Master out, the Doctor answered, "Trouble, I suspect."
The stone felt the Master's certainty. It knew that it was God, omniscient, omnipotent, and yet . . . and yet . . .
Good and Evil were always meant to face each other in the end, the outcome unknown even to the stone.
And on that day, a trump shall sound.
And on that day, the graves shall yield up their dead.
Outside the church, the blast of the last trump hung still in the air. As it faded, a rumbling became audible. Flocks of terrified birds erupted from the trees, wheeling towards Paradise. An ancient headstone cracked from base to top and fell. It thumped onto the grave it marked. An angel, stained by decades of rain and wildlife, toppled and smashed.
One by one the old graves tore open, spilling their contents into the world. The dead shambled towards the church, trailing dust and bone and stench. Nothing remained to them but the command of the stone.
I am the Lord thy God. Defend me . . .