Jovah's Angel

by Sharon Shinn

  “So can electricity,” she answered with asperity, then remembered his father, and wished she hadn’t.

  But he grinned. “Right. Power is always inherently dangerous. You pick your devils, I suppose. But if you wired for electricity, you could do all sorts of things, not just with lighting. You could have powered lifts to haul items up the mountain, just for instance. One of the Semorrah merchants is having a friend of mine outfit his vaults with electronic locks that can only be opened by himself.”

  “Well,” Alleya began dubiously, “you know I’m not convinced that widespread technology is always a benefit.”

  He held up the silver music disk as if it were something incalculably precious. “If we understood the principles behind this little gadget, and if we understood how this entire piece of equipment operated, think what you could do then! You could record your own music! These disks are, what, six hundred years old? Hasn’t there been other splendid music written in the past six centuries? But you have no way to record it for other generations to hear, do you? It’s all”—he waved his hands—“passed on from one generation to the next. Oral history.”

  “Well, there are ways to write the music down so that you can learn it without having heard it performed—”

  He shrugged; clearly an inferior method. “But you don’t get that nuance, do you? You don’t get to hear the quality of the singer’s voice.”

  “Well, no,” Alleya admitted.

  “If we could understand this technology”—he turned again to admire the disemboweled machine—“we could record your voice. Delilah’s. Think of the possibilities! You wouldn’t even have to attend the Gloria in person. You could record your mass some day when the weather was good and all your best singers were in attendance, then set up your machine in the middle of the Plain of Sharon, hit a button—and suddenly, all the music of the angels would come pouring out.”

  Alleya was shocked to her soul. “You couldn’t do that!”

  “No,” he confessed. “Not only do I not know how to record the music, we have a very hazy understanding of how sound is transmitted in the first place. It travels, of course, like a rock ricocheting off a canyon wall, but—”

  “I meant, even if the technology existed, you couldn’t have—a machine singing the prayers to Jovah!”

  That stopped him from a digression into the nature of noise. “What? Why not? I would think it would be a tremendous savings of time and effort.”

  “But time and individual effort is what the Gloria is all about!” she exclaimed. “It’s not just the music—it’s what the music represents. All the people of Samaria coming together in harmony, working in concert, proving to the god that they are living in peace. Even if he could be fooled by some mechanical reproduction of those voices—even if that were so, the very thought of such a thing is sacrilegious. Is blasphemy. The idea of the Gloria is not to trick the god. The idea of the Gloria is to keep men from falling into war and destruction.”

  Her vehemence had pulled him up short. Now he gave her a slow smile and shook his head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to rouse such passion,” he said. “You forget you’re not talking to a god-fearing man. I don’t tend to think of the divine aspects of things.”

  “And you forget you’re talking to the Archangel,” she said tartly. “Jovah is always present in my thoughts.”

  “I’m constantly amazed at how convinced people like you can be—angels, and most of the Edori, and many other men,” he said. “You don’t even question. You don’t even wonder. You merely say, ‘Jovah is there,’ and that is the end to it. No doubt or speculation.”

  Alleya spread her hands. How could she possibly explain? “I don’t understand how you can doubt,” she said. “There is proof every day of his existence.”

  “Proof? I see no thunderbolts, no strikes of lightning. I hear no majestic voice speaking to us from above. I do not—forgive me, angela, but I do not—see him answering the angels’ prayers. I would think, these days more than ever, you would have disbelievers in your ranks.”

  “There are disbelievers, although generally not among the angels,” she answered quietly. “And yes, these days Jovah seems deaf to the angels—some of the angels, some of the time. But not deaf to me. I hear him listening to my voice, as you hear a mortal man in the same room listening to your conversation even if he does not reply. The silence is not empty silence. And he responds to my prayers.”

  “I understand you dissipated the storms over the Galo Mountain when no other angel from Monteverde or the Eyrie could do it.”

  “Jovah chose to heed me. And even if he had not, I would not have doubted his existence. I have witnessed too many other miracles.”

  He smiled a little sadly. “I admire your faith, but I have no desire to copy it. I will be a doubter to the end.”

  She smiled back, lifting her hands in benediction. “Jovah will watch over you nonetheless,” she said.

  He glanced around at the mess he had made on the floor. “I need to put all this back together—but, if you don’t mind, I’d rather leave it till I’ve seen what I can do with a motor. It might take me a day or two to rig what I need. Will that be a problem?”

  Her eyes traced the same circuit across the scattered coils and parts. “I don’t think so. No one comes into these rooms anymore since the equipment failed. We can leave a note on the door. Nothing will be disturbed.”

  “Good. I’ll be back in the morning if I can scrounge up a motor.”

  “You know about the Edori Daniel in Velora?”

  “That’s the first place I intend to go.”

  “And do you have accommodations in the city? Or would you like me to see what might be available here?”

  “I’d prefer the city, thank you. But I was wondering—”

  “Yes?”

  He seemed to speak with unwonted formality; perhaps, for a change, he was the one who was embarrassed. “If your duties permit, I would like to have dinner with you tonight. I enjoyed our last meal tremendously.”

  She had thousands of domestic details to attend to, and she was half-promised to Samuel for the evening meal, but suddenly she could not bear the thought of denying herself one brief opportunity to escape. “Oh, yes, that would be lovely,” she said, before she had time to think about it too long.

  “Can you go now?”

  “I need an hour or so to take care of some things. We could meet in Velora, if you like.”

  “Any place you’d recommend?”

  “There’s a place you might like called Obadiah’s. The food’s good and it’s quiet enough to talk. There’s music, of course—I don’t believe there’s a single restaurant in Velora that doesn’t offer some kind of music—but it’s mostly background noise. Does that sound all right?”

  He smiled warmly. Really, he had the most attractive smile. “In an hour and a half?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Over dinner, the talk almost instantly reverted to religion. “What I would most like to know,” said Caleb, “is how Jovah brought us here. How he chose Samaria, yes, but more than that, how he carried out the actual mechanics.”

  Alleya laughed. Tonight she had relaxed her usual rules of personal conduct and agreed to a glass of wine. She had rarely indulged in alcohol before she became Archangel, and never since then, because she felt her abilities were already insufficient to her task; being rendered tipsy would in no way improve her chances of succeeding at her job. But. Tonight. One glass of wine.

  “A miracle wrought by Jovah,” she agreed. “I know. The Librera is very unspecific. Even the old history books are not clear on how the miracle was accomplished.”

  “So how do you think it was done?”

  “I think he wrapped his fingers around us and carried us here.”

  “Through space? From another world? How far? How far away do you think the nearest star is? I think the distance is unimaginable. How long did it take? A minute? A year? A century?”

  “What does it
matter how long it took? It happened. We are here. That is all the evidence you need.”

  “No, it is not all the evidence I need,” he retorted, smiling. “I want diagrams and distances and facts.”

  “They don’t seem to be available. I have found some old texts—translations of histories written shortly after Samaria was settled—and even there very little is explained. Maybe they were translated so long after the event that the translators didn’t have words for what the colonists experienced. Or maybe no one understood how Jovah transported us.”

  She smiled. “I have found an old reference to two contentious brothers named Victor and Amos Edor,” she continued. “They left the original group of settlers and refused to join the new communities, and took their wives and children with them. So it seems that from the very beginning, the Edori did not behave like the rest of us.”

  “And they still don’t believe like the rest of you.”

  “They worship Jovah, as we do. Though they name him differently.”

  “They believe that Jovah watches over all of Samaria, and listens to anyone’s prayer, not just the angels’,” Caleb said.

  “The angels believe Jovah hears everyone but that he hears the angels more clearly.”

  “And the Edori think that Jovah is only one god of many—the only god who watches over Samaria, perhaps, but not the only god in the universe. They say that for every other world, a god has been chosen—that if you were to travel to some other planet, for instance, it would not be Jovah you prayed to but—who knows?—Novah or Shovah or Carovah.” He had started seriously enough, but ended on a laugh as he made his little rhymes.

  Alleya was half shocked and half fascinated. “Do they truly? But then do they feel there is no coherent force in the whole universe, just all these independent godlings? Who ensures harmony? Who keeps the gods from feuding?”

  “They say there is a god greater than all these lesser ones. They call him the nameless one, and they say he protects the universe.”

  “So this nameless one, I suppose, instructed Jovah to carry us from the old world to the new one. Does that mean Jovah once watched over that old world—and then abandoned it?”

  “I never asked the Edori that. A good question! Of course, if everything we have learned is true, it is a world that deserved to be abandoned by its god.”

  But she felt a stricken look tighten the skin on her face. “And how did those who were left behind learn that their god had abandoned them?” she asked in a low voice. “Did he cease answering their prayers? Turn his face from them? Allow them to be slowly destroyed by storm and flood?”

  “More good questions,” Caleb said gently. “But you say that Jovah still hears you.”

  “So far,” she said. “So far.”

  She took another sip of her wine, but it fell to a hollow place in her stomach. She could see that her distress was having its effect on Caleb, for he visibly searched for another topic of conversation.

  “After you left us in Luminaux,” he said, “I asked Delilah to tell me what she knew of you.”

  Alleya made an effort and smiled. “I would be interested to know what she said.”

  “Oh, mostly what you had told me yourself—that you were quiet and kept to yourself and did not like to perform for others. But she also mentioned that you were not born at the Eyrie, that you came here when you were ten or twelve. And I found myself wondering where you had been before then. And why your parents did not bring you to the hold sooner.”

  A little laugh escaped her; no one had asked her this story for fifteen or more years. “Well. You’ve heard about angel-seekers, of course.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, my mother was not that sort. My mother—she is difficult to describe. A very focused, dedicated, unsentimental woman who has devoted her life to others. She was not chasing down handsome angels in Velora or Cedar Hills. She was overseeing a community for the blind and the deaf in a small town on Bethel’s western coast. That’s what she still does. Anyway, about thirty years ago, violent illness spread through the community. My mother ran up the plague flag, and an angel responded. He prayed for medicines, which Jovah delivered, and he stayed a day or two to make sure everyone began to recover. By the time he left, apparently, my mother was already pregnant with me.”

  “That’s a fairly dry tale,” he commented. “Did she fall in love with him? Was she heartbroken? Did she ever see him again?”

  “You have to understand, my mother is a fairly dry woman. I have asked her those questions many times myself. She never gave any satisfactory answers. As far as I know, he’s the only man she ever made love to, for while I lived with her, she had no lovers. Why him? Why then? Did he seduce her? Did she seduce him? Did their Kisses light when they first saw each other, as is said to be the case when true lovers meet? She never told me.”

  “Do you know who he is? Perhaps you could ask him.”

  “His name was Jude. He was from Monteverde, and he died before I came to the Eyrie. I never had the courage to ask any of the older Monteverde angels what they knew of him.”

  “So. You were mysteriously conceived, and born in a remote village. But surely, once your mother realized that her child was in fact an angel—”

  “She would have instantly taken me to a hold?”

  “Yes.”

  Alleya shook her head. “Ah, not my mother. She was too busy. She had too many others to care for. And she needed me there.”

  “But—surely—one of the others—they must have noticed that you were an angel child and realized that you should be among your people.”

  Alleya smiled. “They were blind.”

  He threw his head back, startled. “So they did not know you were an angel?” he asked slowly.

  “They knew. The blind learn by touch, and so all of them had felt the feathers of my wings. They knew I was an angel. But they had been isolated all their lives. They didn’t know the conventions that govern an angel’s life.”

  “Not all of them were blind, you said. Some were deaf.”

  She nodded. “Yes—and they, too, had lived apart even from mortals most of their lives. It didn’t occur to them that I did not belong there. Besides, they had their reasons for wanting me to stay.”

  “Which were?”

  She smiled again. “That they could hear me. Even those who were stone deaf since birth. When I sang, they could hear my voice. It was the most marvelous thing that had ever happened to them—you could see it in their faces. I sang, and they heard music. I have never had an audience so appreciative. Not even Jovah.”

  He leaned forward, fascinated. “They could hear you? Clearly enough to make out words?”

  “Well, you have to understand, many of them did not know words because they had never heard words spoken. But they could hear my music, and a sort of—I guess it sounded like a croon to them. To people who could hear nothing at all, even something so formless was miraculous. I used to sing to them for hours.

  “And there were some,” she continued, “especially those who had lost their hearing when they were older—after some accident or a fever—they could distinguish words when I sang. I was even able to teach some of them more words. They don’t speak well, of course, but they can communicate.”

  “I’m awestruck,” Caleb said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Well, so you can see why my mother wanted to keep me around.”

  “The question now is why she ever let you go.”

  “I don’t believe she would have of her own free will. But one summer we were visited by a new band of traders—these were Jansai, and most of our other traders had been Edori. The leader of this group started questioning my mother very closely about me, how old I was, who my father was, how much time I spent in the holds and how much time with her. I think her fear was that he would go to the Archangel and trade his information about me for money or special privileges.”

  “And your mother was afraid that you would be taken
away from her and never allowed to see her again.”

  “Oh, no. She was afraid the angels would come looking for me—and insist that she come with me to a hold. She did not want to leave Chahiela, you see. So instead of taking me to the Eyrie, she took me to Mount Sinai to ask the oracle Rebekah for her advice.”

  “I’m sure that was an interesting experience. Were you afraid?”

  “Of Rebekah? Not at first. She was very old, you know. She died a few years ago. I was overwhelmed by Sinai, though—all those tunnels and that inexplicable interface. I remember trying to peer into one of the rooms off the main chamber—and she scolded me for not sitting quietly. She obviously had not had much experience with children.”

  “So she told your mother you should be taken to the Eyrie.”

  “Yes, but my mother would not take me. So Rebekah summoned one of the angels to come fetch me, and my mother went home.”

  “Before you had left?”

  “Yes.”

  “Leaving you alone with Rebekah?”

  “Yes. Although I really spent most of those three days with the acolytes. I had no idea what was happening to me, where I was going, why. It was a dreary time.”

  “I can imagine! It seems very heartless, all in all.”

  “I told you, my mother is an unsentimental woman. She could not keep me, so she took me where I was supposed to be, and didn’t fret about it.”

  “And how often did you see her after that?”

  “Oh, I always go back to Chahiela for a week or two a couple of times a year. When I was very young, one of the angels would take me. When I was old enough, of course, I flew by myself. Everyone is always happy to see me, and I sing for them, teach some of the children new words. But it seems like a strange world to me now. There are many new inhabitants that I don’t know. And it is impossible to feel close to my mother. So I no longer look forward to the visits. It no longer feels like a place where I belong.”

  “And the Eyrie?” he asked, watching her closely. “Does it feel like a place where you belong?”

  She smiled somewhat sadly. “You know the answer to that.”