“That’s disgusting!” The last thing Trajan wanted was to carry that image with him when he went up to recite the Entreaty of Dedication.
A short time later, the ceremony commenced. Lear led the ceremony, as was traditional in the family-centered Iestan faith. Iest was a faith without churches, priestesses, or hierarchies. Religion was practiced daily, in the home, led by the heads of the household, as Vesta taught. She took her position before the altar, and spread her arms in a gesture of welcome. “In honor of Vesta, the daughter of God, mother of all the children of light, uniter of the star and the sword, the cross and the wheel, the spirit and the path, of science and religion, who gave humanity the key to the stars, we commence this ceremony of passage for my son, Trajan Johannes Lear.”
There was applause and cheers, of a tasteful and muted variety appropriate to the occasion. Lear waited for it to subside. “I believe that it is through the Passage that we find meaning. We may not find such meaning during the Passage itself, but the Passage does mark the first step toward finding that meaning that gives purpose to our lives.
“At the time of my Passage, I always thought the most important aspect of Vesta’s journey was the walk by the sea. For it was when she walked by the sea that her experiences coalesced into meaning. She realized she was the Daughter of God, and His Messenger, and that she must lead humanity from the darkness that had befallen us.
“As I look back now, the journey of Vesta in itself was not the most important point of the story. Whether or not she really met with angels, or messiahs, or prophets is not important either. What is important is that Vesta came out of that ordeal with a vision and a purpose that carried her through life. She turned her inward vision outward to the world, a fallen world, decayed in spirit, rotting in decline. She led humanity back from the brink, and opened up the stars to us.
“We begin by revisiting the life of Vesta, whose own passage was an accident of fate, but which led her to unite the many faiths of Earth, and revive the human spirit when it was in the darkest hour of its darkest night.”
Taking his cue, Trajan stepped forward. His mother kissed him on the forehead, and he had to keep from shying away from her. He strode to the podium and set down his pack by the side. With a wave of his hand, he activated a hologram that accompanied his narrative. There were many versions of this story available in holographic form, for display during the ceremony of Passage. Trajan had agreed to the same version as was used at his mother’s Passage, and the Passage of Lears for generations before him.
The custom was for the initiate to provide his own narrative, in his own words, of Vesta’s journey. Some wrote the experience into poems, which they recited on the altar. Some wrote songs, and some acted out the whole journey in mime or interpretive dance. Trajan Lear took the more common, literal approach.
“When Vesta was 12 years old, she undertook a journey, from a city the ancient text called Beautiful Horizon to another city called the Port of Joy. This was on Earth. She made her journey alone. Her parents had gone on before her. She traveled first by airship, which was the common mode of transport in those ancient days, but a few hours into her flight, a great storm came up from the sea. Her ship was torn from the sky and crashed.
“Everyone on board perished, except for Vesta, who escaped without even the slightest injury. She found herself alone, in darkness, far from anywhere. All around her was burning debris and dead bodies... rather than await rescue, she chose to make her way to the next city.
“She walked for three days. She walked until the sun rose on the first day, and when day came, she rested. She was tired after a long night of walking, and it was hot out. She lay down to rest in a place where trees made a natural shelter. She could not sleep, but rested and waited for the day to pass.
“As she waited, two beings, a man and a woman, appeared beside her, as though in a dream. She could not remember them approaching, and could not recall exactly when they appeared. It was as though, she said, they had been with her the whole time. They were tall and beautiful, and glowed with an Inner Light. The first thing she remembered them asking was ‘Are you afraid?’
“She answered nay. They continued to walk with her, and they spoke of many things. They were sorrowful over humanity’s dire condition, and asked her if she knew how humanity had fallen so low.”
“‘Because we pursue false gods,’ Vesta told them. ‘We value things that do not matter.’
“And they were very pleased.
“This answer just kind of came to her, she said later. She said it was like someone had opened her up, and pure truth was flowing through her. ‘Could this be the one to whom the truth has been given?’ said the man-being.
“‘It is so,’ said the woman being.
“And then they ‘went away.’ I don’t know what Vesta means when she says they ‘went away.’ I don’t know if they just disappeared or walked away.
“The sun went down. Vesta kept walking. She knew the sea lay to the east, so she began walking away from the direction the sun set, and tried to keep to a straight line.
“Another man began walking beside her.
“‘Would you help me?’” Vesta asked. “I’m lost and hungry, and I need to find a city.’
“The man who approached was serene, smooth, and fat. He wore a simple orange robe, and for a while he walked beside her, saying nothing. He gave her some water, but refused to say anything, even when she asked him. When he finally spoke, the fat man asked her. ‘Is there anything in this world that can be taken into the next?’
“She thought about this and said, ‘Nothing outside of us can survive, not money, or clothes, or anything we can possess. Only what we carry inside... wisdom and truth.’
“And the Fat Man was pleased. He did not say another thing, and after a while, she noticed he was no longer walking with her.
“On the second day, a great storm came up. With thunder and lightning and pounding rain. A man stepped out of the rain. He was tall, very muscular, with long black hair down his back and intense, fiery-dark eyes and completely naked.
“‘Don't be frightened,’he told her. And she tried not to be afraid of him. She asked him who he was, and he gave her a name that seemed to be many names, but made made her think of wind, sun, moon, corn, water, and many different animals. ‘I am told you seek a path,’
he said.
“‘I am looking for a way into a city. I am lost,’ she told him.
“ He told her, ‘The path that I have to show you is among the oldest of paths. Many have followed it. It may lead you home, however, it will be a long path.’
“‘Why should I follow your path?’ she asked.
“ ‘It is, in some ways, an easier path, but it is very slow.’ She agreed to follow his path.
“Then, another man came to her. ‘Sister,’ he asked, ‘may I walk with you?’ Vesta said he looked like the gentlest, and saddest man, she had ever seen. He told her, ‘There was a time when I tried to follow a certain path, and I tried to lead others with me. Few followed me, and many of those who said they would follow me, only claimed to follow me, but did not really follow me.’
“‘If they had followed you, what would have happened?’ Vesta asked him.
“I tried to teach everyone to love everyone else, to treat everyone else as they would have treated God himself. In the end, perhaps that is exactly what they did.
“Vesta was sad about this. ‘People treat each other terribly. Everywhere one looks, it is clear that fortune favors evil. In the houses of the rich, every manner of depravity is practiced. Good people suffer for their unwillingness to lower themselves. Maybe people don’t deserve anything better than the world we make for ourselves.
“‘And he told her, ‘The world is a reprobate place. What you have to decide for yourself is, do I want to be judged by the standards of a degenerate world, or do I want to hold myself accountable to a higher standard?’
“Vesta thought about this, and then she asked him
, ‘If I were to set a higher standard for myself, what would that standard be?’
“‘Simply to act toward others as you would have them act toward you. Hold to the truth. Be generous in spirit. Be moral in your own life. Be above reproach. Show kindness, compassion, and strength.’
“Vesta agreed that he spoke in truth.”
“And he was gone.”
“The last man to approach Vesta was a man with a sword, and a cat. He regarded her critically. ‘Your attire is immodest,’ he said.
“I have been on my own for two days,’ she answered him. ‘I have no food, I am tired, but I know in another day I will be saved.’
“The man took his sword and swung it against a tree. The tree fell, revealing a roadway. They walked down the roadway together.
“And the man said, ‘When darkness pervades the world, one is chosen to bear the burden of leading the world out of darkness. The message has already been given, but it has been forgotten. A prophet must be chosen to repeat the message, to remind people of the undeniable truth. If you follow on my path, you may become the prophet.’
“Vesta thought about this, and then asked, ‘What would be required of me?’”
“The man asked her in response, ‘Will you respect the equality of all persons?’
“And Vesta said, ‘I will.’
“‘Will you forswear intoxicants of all kinds?’”
“And Vesta said, ‘I will’
“‘Will you support justice in all things, in all ways, to all people?’
“And Vesta said, ‘I will.’
“The man said, ‘Then, if you so choose at the end of your journey, you may take up my sword.’ He walked away from her. He was the only one she saw actually walk away. Trajan paused. He realized, in his nervousness, he had skipped part of the story, an important part of the story. He wondered if he should go back, but decided to plunge on ahead and be finished with it.
“The sun was about to some up, and the air grew suddenly colder. This was the third day. Vesta found herself walking beside the two beautiful creatures again. They asked her if she had chosen a path for herself.
“ ‘I have a question,’ Vesta said. ‘All the one’s who have visited me have been men. Why have no women come to me?’
“The beings looked at each other, and they gave her an answer that ... that’s very hard to put into words. They said that women, collectively, had been guiding humanity all along, and to find a single woman, capable of serving in the role of... savior... was very rare. They had chosen many in the past, but none had prevailed.
“And Vesta understood, and then she gave them her answer.. ‘I can not choose only one path, for all of them are wise, and all of them speak truth. Truth can not deny truth, and therefore to choose only one, and to deny the others, is a denial of truth. I will follow all of them, all my days.’
“‘How can you follow so many different paths?’
“She told them, ‘A true God is a Creator of all things good. All true and good paths lead to the same place... the place of truth. So long as I pursue truth, and do so with a pure heart, I will find the truth.
“The next day, they ... the rescue party ... found her. She was 60 kilometers, or so, from the crash site. She was lying in a kind of shack, not far from the sea. After she returned, and told people of her vision, she was told that her revelation was simply a hallucination, and told to forget about it, but she would not.
“She went on to become a great leader, a great thinker. She wrote 100 prophecies, and 99
were proven true. She foretold of our journey to the stars... she told us how to reach the stars ... and what we would find ... and many other things.”
He looked at his audience. They were bored, not too terribly. He could feel his mother beaming with pride off at the side of the altar.
“I offer a prayer that my own Passage will show me a path that I can follow, to serve in Vesta’s memory, to serve all my brothers and sisters.”
“Amen,” said the audience, as the hologram presentation disappeared, and was replaced with an active schematic of the deck-layout of Pegasus. “My journey,” he said, his voice nearly cracking, “will begin here.” He pointed to a spot at the front of the ship, “Sector 01, Deck Minus 63, The Undergrid of the primary sensor array. The most remote point on the ship accessible through the intraship transport system. My goal will be to return to here... Garden Deck Nine, within three Republic Days.”
There was some polite applause, much to Trajan’s discomfort. “The horizontal distance is only three-thousand seven hundred meters, so, I should have plenty of time for meditation. And I’ll be seeing some parts of the ship very few people see. Thank you.”
There was more polite applause, of the sort appropriate to the event. His mother, father, and brothers joined him, as the rest of the celebrants divided, allowing the family to pass through the center.
Feeling lightheaded, as though all the breath were being sucked out from him, Trajan Johannes Lear stepped forward to the transport pod.
Amenities Nexus – Deck 23, Section 72:00
Eddie Roebuck had agreed to meet Eliza Change in the Recreation Complex. He was looking forward to it. He had actually been spending a lot of time on the Recreation Deck since quitting his job, but most of it was by himself. The times he had spent with her had been the closest he had ever been to being happy since he had joined the Odyssey Program. He had a nice glass of chilled ale waiting for her, and an order of her favorite crustacean appetizers. He turned over in his mind the idea of asking Eliza to quit her post and join him. Maybe they could run away to the UnderDecks together.
He did not let this trouble him long. Eliza would never forsake her duty. This was, perhaps, her only flaw. When he saw her enter the complex, he smiled and waved her over. From the look on her face, she had just been through a tough duty shift. He hoped he could make her feel better.
“Lizzie, glad to see you. Sit down and start putting beverages into your mouth.”
She did not sit down at first. “You put me in a really tough spot today, Eddie.”
“Didn’t I? What’s the breakdown?”
“While I was on watch, the issue of disciplining you for dereliction of duty came up. It’s in my hands now, Eddie.”
Eddie stood and held her chair for her. “Come on, sit down. Don’t make a big tension out of it. Vesta Krishna, I thought it was something serious.”
“It is serious, Eddie. I have to discipline you.”
“Not necesarily. As the commanding officer of this ship, you can sign off on a full pardon.”
At that moment, something clicked in Change’s head. She sat down and leaned toward him. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew that Exec. Cmdr. Lear was out-of-duty, and that Redfire and Keeler would be off the ship when the issue of disciplining you came up... and I would be the one in command.”
“Now, you’re getting it, my timing just could not have been better.” He raised his hand.
“High-five me.”
“You bastard!” she hissed at him, making heads turn around the complex. “You were going to use me to get out of work. How dare you put me in this position!”
“Hoy, Eliza,...”
She stood again. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare say another word.”
He reached for her hand, and she pulled it away. “What’s gotten into you, babe? I thought we were on the same side here. It’s not Matthew is it? I mean, is tight-ass a contagious syndrome?”
“Eddie, people tried to pull this kind of slag on me in the Mining Guild all the time. I didn’t take it from any of them and I’m not taking it from you. Do you understand? Don’t you ever, ever try to pull something like this with me again.”
Finally, it dawned on Eddie that Eliza was not staging an outburst for someone else’s benefit. He had expected her to go along. He had thought she had the same disrespect for the ship’s authority figures as he did. Now, he realized he didn’t see it that way.
“I’m sor
ry,” he muttered.
“It’s too late for that,” she told him, her voice lowering. “I turned your case over to Ex-Cmdr. Lear. You’re her disciplinary problem now.”
Eddie felt a sudden chill. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“But Cmdr. Lear is on Medical Exception.”
“As Acting Commanding Officer, I can delegate non-command functions to her at my discretion. I told her I had to recuse myself from this action for personal reasons, and she agreed... after a lecture on the quality of people an officer should choose to spend time with.”
Eddie was blown away. “You can’t do this.”
She fixed him straight in the eye with a glare that was almost radioactive. “Eddie, if you ever pull any kind of stunt like this with me again, I will take care of your discipline myself, and you will think of Ex-Cmdr. Lear as the Matron Saint of Mercy.”
Chapter Six
While they awaited the Scion’s decision of what to do with them, the landing team waited in his rooftop garden-hall. The floor was alabaster, and matched the gold-trimmed pillars that surrounded the perimeter. Red silk curtains fluttered in the breeze around them The top was open to the sky, and they could see the tip tops of a few other buildings. Time continued to crawl. Keeler rested on a kind of stone chaise, carefully studying his surroundings and the four-armed guards that surrounded them. “What did the Scion mean about their ancestors being ‘gods’?” Alkema wondered aloud.
“These people probably have formulated a kind of creation-myth to explain their presence on this world, basing it on racial memories of the world’s colonization. It may form the basis of the local religion.” Keeler traced his finger along a gold inlay on the arm of the chaise, recognizing a kind of ideogram language. “Our arrival may have shaken things up. If the Scion’s power is derived from his position in the religious heirarchy, he may perceive us as a threat. They may be debating right now whether to kill us, imprison us, or just make us leave.”
“Aw, shit,” said Toto.
Worlds Apart 02 Edenworld Page 8