When Vivien sat down on the flat rock beside Johann, and accepted the cup of herbal tea that Sister Nuba offered her, she admitted that she was exhausted. “It’s not every day you find out that your husband is dead,” she said, forcing herself to smile.
“How were your talks with the children?” Johann asked.
“Terrible,” Vivien replied. “Jomo couldn’t understand what I was telling him, and the two girls both cried hysterically. I had wonderful feelings of ineptitude and inadequacy—just what a mother needs.” She shook her head and took a drink of her tea. “Nuba,” she then said, “would you hand me one of my cigarettes, please. They’re in that skinny brown pouch.”
Johann watched with amusement as Vivien leaned forward and lit her makeshift cigarette with the fire. She inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out both her nose and mouth.
“I found this stuff growing wild out beside the chasm where we used to live,” Vivien said, answering Johann’s unspoken question. “It’s not tobacco, and there’s not much of a buzz, but hey, it makes me feel good to watch the smoke coming out of my mouth.”
Vivien sighed. “Memories of another life, on another world,” she said. She forced a laugh. “It used to drive Kwame crazy when I smoked in front of the children. So we compromised—the essence of any successful marriage in my opinion—and I agreed to smoke only at night, after the children had gone to bed.”
She took a sip of her drink and inhaled again. This time she blew four perfect smoke rings and admiringly watched them rise to the underside of the rock overhang. “But enough of this idle prattle, giant Johann. What Nuba and I are both dying to know is how did Yasin conceive a child with the woman we all loved? I can’t accept for a moment that she was a willing partner.”
“It’s a long story;” Johann said. “Are you certain you want to listen to it tonight? Wouldn’t it be better to wait until some other time, when you—”
“If I go to bed now,” Vivien interrupted him, “I’ll just think about Kwame and feel sorry for myself. I need to be distracted, to forget my own concerns.” She took another drag off her cigarette and flicked it into the fire. “By the way,” she added, with a fond gaze in Sister Nuba’s direction, “isn’t she impressive, still wearing that slit after all these years? She makes a new costume every few months from whatever she can find. And she is still true to all her vows—service to others, no possessions, no sex. Now that’s some kind of devotion. There had better be a special room in heaven for people like Nuba, or God is missing the boat…”
JOHANN STARTED HIS story at the beginning, when Sister Beatrice and he departed from the nine others soon after they had entered the gigantic alien sphere in which they were still living. He told the tale in chronological order, without inordinate detail, highlighting all the major events. He fairly summarized his running debate with Beatrice about whether their hosts here were God’s angels or aliens of extraordinary technological capability, Johann omitted only those things that were intensely personal, such as his specific arguments with Beatrice about the physical consummation of their love, or embarrassing, like his bizarre encounter with the simulated Amanda in the reconstructed Mutchville beside the canal. Johann was forthright about both the strength of his love for Beatrice, and his disappointment that she was unwilling to forsake her Michaelite vows to become his wife.
Vivien and Nuba listened for a long time without interruption. When Johann fell silent, struggling to find the proper words to express the happiness he had felt during his first hundred days with Beatrice, both women offered him understanding and encouragement with gestures and short comments.
Johann’s summary of Yasin’s story about his life with Kwame, Vivien, and the others caused an angry outburst. “What a liar!” Vivien said, taking advantage of the break in the story to light another cigarette. “We gave him every possible opportunity to be part of the group. We even had special meetings, which Kwame called Yasin discussions, to try to figure out some way to include him in our activities in a positive way… And his description of his relationship with Satoko is so ludicrous that it’s comical. She was terrified of him. Yasin took advantage of Satoko’s mental confusion and abused her completely. He was utterly despicable. Can you imagine any human being so low that he would rape, several times, a woman who was both mentally disturbed and pregnant?”
Vivien blew out jets of smoke and her eyes narrowed. “When we suspected that Yasin was returning to the village and having sex with Satoko, but could not confirm anything because Satoko wouldn’t implicate him, I told Kwame that we should catch Yasin in the act and then dismember him. Well, we did catch him all right, but we gave him his freedom by error.”
Johann continued his story, describing Yasin’s first attack on Beatrice, Johann’s own imprisonment, Yasin’s outrageous suggestion that they should share Beatrice, and her eventual sexual humiliation and total denigration.
“Why does God let people like that exist?” Vivien exploded at one point. When Johann told of his escape from prison and Yasin’s death, Vivien applauded. “Good for you, giant Johann,” she said. “You finally gave that bastard what he deserved.”
“You’re not being very charitable, Sister Vivien,” Sister Nuba said softly. It was one of the few times that she had spoken during Johann’s story “Remember the long discussions we had in the village after Yasin—”
“Yes, yes, Nuba,” Vivien said. “Thank you for reminding me… My feelings about Yasin are still so negative that it’s difficult for me to understand that he too is one of God’s creatures. There are aspects of Christian charity that are sometimes beyond my comprehension.”
There was a brief silence and then Vivien yawned. “Johann, I don’t want to be rude, but I also don’t want to miss any part of your amazing story. I’m really tired, and Jomo will be up at daylight. If this is a good stopping point, can we continue again tomorrow night?”
AS REQUESTED, JOHANN finished his story the following evening. Both women wept with him as he described Maria’s birth and Beatrice’s death. Sister Nuba was fascinated by Whiteland. She interrupted several times, asking Johann to supply more details. When Johann admitted being confused and somewhat bitter about being returned to the island, Sister Nuba made an uncharacteristically long speech.
“Whiteland was a part of heaven, Brother Johann,” she said. “And Beatrice and all the other glowing figures you encountered were angels. There’s no other possible explanation that makes sense… You are a most fortunate man, Brother Johann, to have made a visit to heaven during your lifetime, while your soul is still inside the limitations of your body. What a rare privilege you have had. God must still have some extraordinary work for you to accomplish. Do not feel sorrow because you were returned to what we call the real world. Rejoice that you have been granted a glimpse of heaven.”
Johann summarized quickly his years of life on the island with Maria, but then gave a fairly detailed account both of finding Kwame’s body and his subsequent encounters with the nozzlers. Both Vivien and Sister Nuba were intrigued by the intervention of the ribbons and asked many specific questions about their appearance and behavior. Johann’s responses stimulated a long and lively conversation about the ribbons, the nature of the spaceship in which they were living, and the source of the unusual apparitions that had occurred on Earth and Mars. The discussion reminded Johann of the many hours Beatrice and he had spent talking about similar subjects, and thinking about her forced him again to struggle with his feelings of loss. Sister Nuba, not surprisingly was extremely active in the discussion. She adhered to the explanation that their spaceship was part of the domain of God’s angels, and only they, or He, understood the grand scheme of what was occurring.
“We have been chosen by God, all of us, for some special purpose that we will probably never comprehend,” Sister Nuba said.
Johann reiterated his reasons for believing that the ribbons were representatives of a technologically advanced alien culture. He also acknowledged, however, that noth
ing that had happened to any of them thus far was irrefutable proof of either point of view. Vivien’s comments suggested that she could accept either explanation of the true nature of their hosts. Sometimes she agreed with Johann, sometimes with Sister Nuba.
“Besides,” Vivien said near the end of their discussion, as a mother these infinite issues do not occupy much of my energy. I am more interested in how we are going to live, on a day-to-day basis, than in what power is controlling our microcosm.”
Johann hugged both Vivien and Sister Nuba before going to bed. “Now it’s our turn to tell a story,” Vivien said, “although I suspect I’ll do all the talking. I think you’ll find our tale equally fascinating, even though I probably won’t be nearly as orderly in the telling of it as you were… So until tomorrow night, good night and sleep well, giant Johann.”
Vivien reached up and kissed Johann on the cheek. Then she turned and headed for her mat near the children.
TWO
“EXCEPT FOR THE events involving Yasin, Vivien said the next evening as the three adults gathered to talk and sip herbal tea around the fire for the third night in a row, “his description of what happened to us after your departure with Beatrice was reasonably accurate. Two of those peculiar snowmen creatures and a ribbon came for us in that waiting room two hours later. We followed the ribbon up the helical slide and then across a long, dark plateau of some kind until we came to a lake. After a four-hour boat ride we landed on a forested shore, where we walked for hours on a narrow path through the trees. Eventually we reached the clearing with the continuous fire and the tepees that became our village home. We lived there until a month ago.
“At first we did have difficulty organizing ourselves into any kind of a coherent community. In those early days life in our new village was chaotic and stressful. Everybody seemed to be in everyone else’s way. Brother Jose and Sister Nuba were both outspokenly critical of me for renouncing my Michaelite vows so quickly and becoming Kwame’s sexual partner and wife, Yasin fomented controversy and argument in his own unique way, and poor pregnant Satoko, who could not cope with anything that was happening, was a total mess. After a while, however, when everyone but Yasin began to accept Kwame’s leadership, the required tasks were divided up among the members of our group and we settled into an acceptable daily rhythm.”
Vivien lit one of her cigarettes and smiled at Sister Nuba across the fire. “Nuba and Jose even apologized to me for having given me so much grief about Kwame… Soon thereafter, Ravi announced that he too was going to renounce his vows and marry Anna Kasper. All in all, our life was fairly good for a couple of months, and all of us except Yasin were making the necessary adjustments to live together in our unusual environment.
“Then, when it seemed that Satoko’s improved mental condition had finally stabilized, she suddenly took a dramatic turn for the worse. At first none of us suspected that her breakdown might have been caused by a specific event, for Satoko never told us of anything untoward that might have been responsible for her alienation and depression. As time passed, however, we began to notice that her terror and heightened nervousness were always more pronounced when Yasin was around. One evening, while we were talking, none of us could account for Yasin’s whereabouts for several hours on the day that Satoko’s breakdown occurred. On subsequent days when Satoko was left by herself in the village and Yasin was assigned solitary work tasks, her condition was always markedly worse when the rest of us returned from our hunting and gathering.”
Vivien finished her cigarette and shook her head. “It was stupid of us not to realize earlier what was going on. It just didn’t seem possible to us that any human being could be that depraved. Of course, when Yasin was actually caught in the act of raping Satoko, all of us except Sister Nuba exploded in rage. Our primary concern after Yasin was thrown into the chasm was not what a terrible sin we had collectively committed; we were all worried that the bastard might somehow have survived the fall because of the low gravity here.”
Vivien was silent for a long time. “Eventually, of course, each of us realized that we had all participated in what we believed at the time to have been a murder. Especially to those of us who had spent part of our lives in formal religious training, such a deliberate act of violence seemed unforgivable. Our small village became pervaded by an overwhelming gloom. With all that guilt upon our shoulders, life was very difficult for many weeks. Several of us, including Ravi and me, both of whom had vocally encouraged Kwame and Fernando to kill Yasin, had sustained bouts of terrible depression.
“Without Brother Jose and Sister Nuba,” Vivien said, reaching over and touching Nuba’s hand fondly, “we might never have been able to forgive ourselves. But after they both publicly reaffirmed their Michaelite vows, Nuba and Jose declared that we were going to atone for our misdeed by collectively sharing all our feelings about what had happened. For weeks they were towers of strength, eventually managing to convince us that God does not demand perfection, just recognition of sin and then expiation.”
A sound from where the children were sleeping at the opposite end of the cave caused Vivien to turn her head in that direction. She listened intently for a few seconds before taking another sip of her tea. “A mother’s senses are so keen, Johann,” she then said. “I never would have believed it if I hadn’t experienced it myself. No matter what we’re doing, we hear every cough, every sleeping moan that our children make. It’s another of God’s miracles.”
Vivien smiled and looked momentarily puzzled. “Now where was I?” she said with a short laugh. “I’m becoming forgetful in my old age.”
“The period of atonement after Yasin’s death,” Sister Nuba reminded her.
“Oh, yes,” Vivien continued. “Gradually we all returned to our former selves and laughter again rang out regularly in our village. I resumed my role as the comic relief for the group, occasionally sharing some of my more hilarious experiences from my pre-Michaelite days as an escort in London. Sister Nuba and Brother Jose often acted as if they were scandalized by my tales, but more than once I caught them laughing out loud… Satoko gave birth to Keiko without difficulty, and we all joined with Fernando and her in the celebration of the first addition to our community. Our existence then became very orderly. Each of us had a prescribed set of duties.
“After a while, I’ll admit that I started becoming bored by the predictability of our daily routines. Kwame even referred to me as a ‘bitch’ a few times during this period. However, he and the others were saved from my compulsive hunger for variety by a natural event. I became pregnant, and then a mother, and found an infinite outlet for my curiosity and energy.
“Motherhood transformed me, Johann. After little Beatrice’s birth, I often laughed at the strange odyssey of my life, from high-class whore on Earth to doting mother in an alien sphere. I had never imagined myself being the enthusiastic parent, but there I was, day after day regaling everyone with the newest achievements of my darling daughter… Meanwhile, Ravi and Anna had a son, Eric, a year younger than Beatrice, and then Anna became pregnant with Serentha less than two months after Kwame and I conceived Jomo.
“Anna and I became very good friends during our pregnancy together. We would often compare observations on how our thoughts, feelings, and even our dreams changed during pregnancy. At night I would sometimes exult, while rubbing my stomach and feeling my son inside my belly, on the astonishing miracle that is human life. I was happier than I could ever remember being… But Anna and I had to be somewhat circumspect about our joy, for poor Satoko had only recently had her second miscarriage and any overheard comments about the delights of pregnancy were virtually certain to send her spiraling off into another depression.
“Satoko’s mental health was the only significant problem in our community during those years. She knew that Fernando wanted to have a son and obsessively blamed herself for both of the miscarriages. Satoko was so focused on the son she had not yet had that she paid very little attention to her daughter. Sin
ce Keiko and Beatrice were playmates and friends, it was natural that I became Keiko’s acting mother. Fernando didn’t mind. In fact, he was grateful that I was willing to take some of the parenting burden off his shoulders.
“When Satoko became pregnant again, and made it successfully through the first trimester—which was when her earlier miscarriages had occurred—we all rejoiced. For the first extended time period since we left Mars, Satoko seemed normal and rational. Fernando was deliriously happy. The whole community, including Beatrice, Keiko, and Eric, all of whom were now old enough to understand what was happening, participated in the almost daily discussions about how Satoko was carrying the child, and what the implications were for the baby’s sex.
“Sister Nuba had worked extensively with pregnant women at the church in Mutchville and was our resident expert on the sex of unborn children. She had correctly called each of the previous five births. Although she cautioned us that she could be wrong, the day Sister Nuba indicated that she thought the next Gomez would be a boychild, an impromptu party occurred. Kwame and I talked that night, before we fell asleep, about how disappointed Fernando and Satoko would be if the baby turned out to be a girl. We never even considered a more unpleasant scenario.”
Vivien stopped and grimaced. She reached for a cigarette and lit it before continuing. “There are moments in each of our lives that profoundly impact everything that happens from that time forward. Sometimes the significance of these moments is clearly understood at the time, such as when I decided to become a Michaelite priestess, or when we all boarded that hatbox waiting on the Martian plateau. But none of us knew, as we looked in sorrow at Satoko and Fernando’s stillborn son, that all of our lives would be irrevocably changed by the child’s death.
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