by Allen Steele
He started to leave the tent, then he stopped, looked back at Morgan. “See you around. Not too soon, I hope, but…see you around.”
Goldstein said nothing. I left him in the tent, still staring at the ground, as I followed Cassidy outside. The others were still hovering near the fire pit. Cassidy started toward them, but stopped when I touched his shoulder.
“Just one more thing…” I began.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about.” Walking Star didn’t look back at me. “I’m not interested in your secrets. Only your intentions.” He paused. “You’re a good man. Just never come here again.”
I let go of Cassidy’s arm, slowly backed away. I didn’t need to say anything, and he didn’t need to ask. And meanwhile, his tribe silently regarded me with eyes capable of unlocking the doorways of my mind.
A few hours later, Morgan Goldstein and I had returned to the rocky coast of Medsylvania. It was early afternoon, the sunny warmth of an early-spring day slowly baking away the cold memory of the night before. Across the waters lay the Midland coast; not far away, we could see a small white sail. Merle’s pirogue, slowly making its way across the channel toward us. We’d found a large boulder upon which to sit while we waited for him; our backpacks lay next to us, our sleeping bags and tents rolled up and lashed to their frames.
Neither of us had spoken much since we’d left the camp. No one said farewell; we were guests who’d overstayed our welcome, and our hosts were only too happy to see us leave. There’d been little conversation between Morgan and me as we followed the creek back through the forest, avoiding the marshes.
The ribbons I’d tied around trees on the way in helped make it easier to find our way back to the trail. On the way out, though, whenever I found one of them, I used my knife to carefully cut it loose and shove it in my pocket. Morgan noticed me doing this, but didn’t say anything about it. Not until then at least.
“Think you’re ever coming back here?” he abruptly asked.
I looked around at him. He was idly picking up pebbles and tossing them into the shallows. I didn’t know if he was genuinely curious, or just making small talk.
I found a small, flat stone. A flick of the wrist made it skip across the still blue waters. “I doubt it,” I said, then decided to be honest. “No. If anyone ever tries to hire me as a guide again…up here, I mean…I’ll say no. At least not as far as this place is concerned.”
“Can’t say I blame you.” He picked up a piece of loose shale, tried the same trick. It sank as soon as it hit the water. “What would you tell ’em?”
“I’ll tell them there are dangerous creatures in these woods.” Realizing what I’d just said, I smiled. “Not too far from the truth, really.”
“No…no, it’s not.” Morgan tried again with another rock; this time he managed to make it skip twice. He learned fast. “What if I asked you?”
I looked at him again. He continued to peer at the channel; no expression on his face, and his thoughts were unreadable. By me, at least.
“I’d still say no,” I replied. “Why? You think you’re coming back?”
He glanced over his shoulder at the woods behind us. Almost as if he were expecting to see someone standing there, studying us from the shadows of the tall roughbark that lined the shore.
“No…no, I don’t think so,” he said at last, looking back at the channel again. “You’re right. There are too many dangerous creatures here.”
The pirogue was closer, near enough that we could see Merle sitting in its stern. Mike Kennedy was with him; he raised a hand in greeting, and I raised mine in return. “That’s probably wise,” I said quietly.
“Uh-huh.” Morgan skipped another rock, then hoisted himself to his feet. “Not that it matters.”
“Come again?”
Morgan was quiet for a moment as he leaned down to pick up his pack. “Joe’s not going to stay here forever,” he said at last. “We’re going to see him again…him and the rest of his tribe. Oh, they’ll stay here as long as it takes for them to learn how to control what they’ve learned to do. But when they’re ready…”
He fell silent. He didn’t need to finish his thoughts. Nonetheless, I felt a chill despite the warmth of the midday sun. He was right. Sooner or later, we’d see Walking Star and his people among us.
And when we did, our thoughts would never be our own again.
Part 3
TRUE RELIGION
The Church of the Holy Dominion was a modest two-story building on College Street in Liberty. Modeled after the Spanish missions of old California, it was built of adobe brick, with twin bell towers rising above its tiled mansard roof. The first Dominionist missionaries to Coyote were fortunate enough to acquire land near the Colonial University, so the church was established in an ideal location, directly across the street from the college library; it was hoped that students seeking respite from their secular pursuits would discover the nearby church and, God willing, find enlightenment in the word of the Lord.
A cold spring rain was falling when the Reverend Alberto Cosenza climbed out of the shag wagon that had carried him into town. The driver who’d picked him up at the gyroport in Shuttlefield waited patiently while Cosenza pulled a few colonials from his overcoat pocket; the deacon noticed the frown on the man’s face when he saw that the amount he received was no more than the stated fare, and Cosenza grudgingly added another colonial as a tip. Perhaps it was still not enough, but the driver would have to be satisfied; the Church was on hard times, and Cosenza was keenly aware of how much it had cost for him to travel to 47 Ursae Majoris. The driver didn’t say anything, though—the fact that his passenger was a holy man, and an older one at that, might have kept him from complaining—but instead shook the reins and clucked his tongue. The shag farted loudly, and Cosenza barely had enough time to retrieve his suitcase before the hairy beast trudged away, its immense feet stamping through the mud.
Cosenza turned toward the church, pulling the brim of his fedora down against the rain. He’d just walked up the steps when the front door opened and another man dressed in the black suit and red shawl of a Dominionist clergyman appeared within the arch.
“Reverend Cosenza,” he began. “I’m so sorry, I hadn’t realized that you…”
“Arrived, yes. Late, no.” Cosenza scowled as the pastor moved to take his suitcase from him. “The least you could have done was send someone to pick me up.”
The minister blanched at the admonishment, and Cosenza immediately regretted the harshness of his tone. Tall and thin, with a sparse beard and long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, the Reverend Grey Rice had the monastic look of a young pastor only a few years out of divinity school. “My apologies,” he added, more quietly now. “I’m sure you meant no disrespect. It’s just that I could have done without the means by which I got here.”
Rice forced a rueful smile. “You’ve just met your first shag, I take it.” Cosenza nodded, and the pastor shook his head. “It would’ve made no difference. If I’d hired a cab to pick you up, it would’ve been the same thing.”
“You couldn’t have sent a coupe instead?”
“Coupes are rather expensive, I’m afraid, and…” Rice’s voice trailed off, the rest of what he meant to say left unspoken. Sorry to make you ride in a wagon, but the Church doesn’t have enough money in its coffers to provide you with modern transportation. “At least you didn’t have to walk,” he finished, a lame excuse if Cosenza had ever heard one.
The deacon grunted as he removed his hat. “Well, at any rate, I’m here,” he murmured, shaking rainwater from the fedora and tucking it under his arm. “Perhaps you can show me to my quarters.”
“Of course. Right this way.” Rice turned toward the open door, then hesitated for a moment. “Midday services are scheduled to begin in about five minutes, but…”
“Then perhaps you should hurry. You don’t want to keep your congregation waiting.”
It seemed as if Rice wanted to add something else,
but decided instead to keep his mouth shut. He quickly ushered Cosenza through the foyer, giving the deacon just enough time to notice certain details—the sign-in book that no one had signed, the stacks of untouched tracts on the front table, the bulletin board which bore only a two-week-old notice for an Easter dinner—until they reached the double doors leading into the sanctuary.
“The guest room is upstairs,” Rice said as he opened the door. “We can cut through the chancel to—”
“Just a moment.” Cosenza came to a halt just inside the door, let his eyes sweep the room. The sanctuary was little larger than the wedding chapel of his own church in Milan, but it had obviously been built with loving hands. Dim sunlight slanted down through mullioned windows upon polished faux-birch pews arranged on either side of the center aisle. On the raised nave at the far end of the room, a felt-covered altar stood beneath the helix-backed Dominionist crucifix; to the left stood the choir stall, its high-backed chairs facing the elevated pulpit box. Cast-iron chandeliers suspended from blackwood rafters illuminated the cherubs and seraphim that gazed down from the limestone buttresses holding up the barrel ceiling.
The church was beautiful. It was also empty. Although only a few minutes remained before commencement of midday services—indeed, the tower bells were already beginning to toll—no one was seated in the pews. Even those parishioners who habitually showed up early were absent, and when Cosenza turned his head to gaze through the open door, he saw no one waiting in the foyer.
The deacon looked at the young pastor, who lowered his eyes in embarrassment, acknowledging the unasked question. “No,” Rice said quietly, “there’s no one here. They didn’t come yesterday, and I don’t think they’ll come today.”
Cosenza stared at him. “And Sunday…Orifiel, I mean. What about then?”
“Sometimes I get a few. Two, three…no more than five or six, and then only on holidays. Of course, the Gregorian calendar isn’t observed here, so it doesn’t make much sense to hold Christmas or Easter mass three times a year. But…”
His voice faltered, his humiliation complete. “No,” Rice went on, “that’s not really an excuse, is it? There are other churches in town…Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian…and we also have a synagogue and a mosque. I’ve checked with them, and they’ve told me that they always draw worshippers.”
“And you don’t.”
Rice let out his breath as a quiet sigh as he placed the deacon’s bag on the floor. “Let me show you something,” he said as he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket to pull out a folded sheaf of paper. “This is my sermon. I’ve memorized it, of course, but I always bring a copy in case I forget something. I wrote it two weeks ago…you may read it if you’d like.” He offered it to Cosenza, but when the deacon didn’t take it from him, he self-consciously lowered his hand. “I haven’t uttered a word of it in public.”
“Why?”
“Because…” Again, Rice hesitated, and it seemed as if the younger man was mustering his courage. “Because no one wants to hear what I have to say. Plain and simple.”
“No.” Cosenza shook his head. “I can see no wants to hear you. That’s not what I’m asking. What I want to know is why they don’t…”
“That’s the reason why I contacted the elders.” Rice abruptly became impatient, as if he were trying to explain the obvious to an obstinate old fool. “They’ve sent you to talk to me, and I appreciate that, but the fact of the matter is that I don’t…I can’t do this any longer.”
“What are you trying to say?” Cosenza peered closely at the pastor. “Are you having a spiritual crisis?”
Rice was quiet for a moment. “Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, I am. I feel that this church no longer has any relevance, and I wish to resign from my post.”
“But…” Cosenza stopped, then went on. “I don’t understand. Tell me, please, what leads you to the conclusion that this church is no longer relevant. I don’t…”
“No. Of course you don’t.” Rice gazed back at him, and for the first time, Cosenza saw the sadness in his eyes. “That’s because you’ve never met a hjadd.”
At Cosenza’s insistence, they waited another fifteen minutes, just in case someone might happen to show up. As Rice predicted, though, no one came; the pews remained vacant, the hymnals untouched, the offering plates empty. Cosenza passed the time by taking a seat in the chancel behind the choir stall and reading the pastor’s sermon. Titled “God’s Plan for Coyote,” it wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before—the Almighty had sent humans to this world as the first step toward fulfillment of His holy plan to propagate the race throughout the universe. Standard Church doctrine, but neither was it the sort of hellfire-and-damnation rant in which young ministers occasionally indulged themselves, often at the expense of their congregations. Whatever Rice was, he wasn’t a radical…which, indeed, was what Cosenza had been told when the Council of Elders asked him to go to Coyote.
After a while, Rice stood up from his seat in the choir. Cosenza watched as he snuffed out the altar candles and collected the offering plates, then he followed the pastor as he stepped behind the chancel and went to the sacristy. There were a couple of chairs in the small antechamber; Rice gestured to them, then went about putting away the plates and hanging up his shawl.
“So…where should I begin?” Rice asked as he sat down across from Cosenza.
“At the beginning.”
“That would only make sense, I suppose.” Rice sighed. “You know, of course, that our first missionaries came here a little less than three Coyote years ago…eight by the Gregorian calendar…right after the starbridge was opened. Since then, our people have dispersed throughout the colonies. We now have smaller missions in Clarksburg, Leeport, Defiance, New Brighton…”
“I’m aware of all that.” Cosenza was trying not to lose patience, but it seemed as if Rice was stalling. “Tell me about the hjadd. What do they have to do with…?”
“I’m getting there.” Rice held up a hand. “At first, we were welcomed…or at least I was, when I arrived to take over this ministry. My predecessor, who’d established this mission before deciding to return to Earth, left me with a congregation of nearly a hundred. Most were recent immigrants, but we also had a few who were second- or third-generation descendants of the original colonists. Not all that many, relatively speaking, but they were open to our message all the same. And then…”
He paused. “Well, I’m sure you know about that, too. The hjadd arrived, and that changed everything.”
“I think you overstate the situation,” Cosenza said. “Not everything changed.”
“On Earth, perhaps not…but no one back home has seen an alien, have they? Not in the flesh, at least.” Rice shook his head. “It’s different here. Most people here haven’t laid eyes on them, either…they’re quite reclusive…nevertheless, their presence is as obvious as the embassy they’ve built.”
He nodded in the general direction of the university. “It’s not far from here, if you’d like to see it. Just on the other side of the campus. Amazing how quickly it went up…only a couple of days.” A shallow grin. “In fact, you could almost call it a miracle…but then again, isn’t it true that only God can perform miracles?”
Cosenza’s mouth tightened at the remark; coming from a clergyman, it was dangerously close to apostasy. Yet he couldn’t deny the fact that the unexpected return of a long-lost European spacecraft bearing a representative of an extraterrestrial race had thrown the Dominionists into an ecumenical crisis. The Church of the Holy Dominion was founded on the belief that, since no intelligent races had been found beyond Earth, God had created Man in His own image, and therefore it was incumbent upon humankind to spread itself throughout the galaxy in order to fulfill His plan. Knowledge of the existence of alien civilizations—not just the hjadd, but apparently many others as well—was a refutation of this fundamental principle.
“We’ve had…some loss of support back home, too.” Cosenza picked his words
carefully. “But the Council of Elders has studied the matter and come to the conclusion that, since the hjadd are clearly not human, they cannot have been created by the Almighty.” He smiled. “Come now, Grey. You know this already. When the first colonists discovered a native species…sandthieves, I believe they’re called…?”
“Chirreep. ‘Sandthieves’ is the old word for them. We don’t use it anymore.” Rice shook his head. “That’s different. The chirreep are hominids, little more than simians. Even the most advanced tribes are barely capable of using tools. The hjadd are different.”
“Certainly they’re different. That’s why they’re the exception.” The deacon confidently raised a finger. “Have they heard the word of the Lord? No? Then they’re not part of His plan, any more than…”
“But that’s just it. They…” Rice stopped. “Look, I’m getting ahead of myself, and I’m afraid you won’t understand me unless I take this one step at a time. If I may…”
“Of course. Sorry.” Cosenza was feeling his stomach begin to growl. It had been many hours since he’d had breakfast in New Brighton, and he’d been expecting to be off to lunch by then. But Rice was determined to explain himself, and as a senior clergyman, Cosenza was obliged to hear him out. “Please continue.”
“Thank you.” Rice clasped his hands together in his lap. “I tried to make that argument in my sermons, but it didn’t help. We started to lose parishioners…only one or two at first, but then I began to notice, every Orifiel, the pews were gradually becoming more empty with each passing week. I’d run into my former parishioners on the street and ask why they were no longer attending services, and they’d all tell me the same thing…it was no longer possible for them to have faith in a religion based upon a belief that they knew to be untrue.”