She started, looked around at the others: Uma, Teo, Golo, and Ramdas, whom she thought of as friends; Chin Ramon and two women, an engineer and a Counsel member, whom she knew as members of the secret circle but did not think of as friends. And Hiroshi, still sitting zazen. They were in Uma’s homespace, furnished “nomad style,” a recent fad, no biltins, only carpeting and pillows in bright paisleys.
“What was that about your health?” Hsing demanded. “And then they were talking about something about heart valves?”
“I have a congenital heart deformity,” he said. “It’s on my H-folder.”
Everyone had an H-folder: genetic map, health record, school records, work history. You held the code on it; nobody could see your H-folder without your permission, until you died and the file went from Records to Archives. A considerable mystique of privacy surrounded these personal files. No one but a coparent or a doctor would ever ask to see your H-folder. That anyone could break or steal the code and look at it without your permission was unthinkable. Hsing had not seen Hiroshi’s H-folder and had never asked to, since they weren’t planning on a child. She did not understand why he had mentioned it.
“Records staff is about ninety percent angels,” Ramon said, seeing her blank expression.
She resented his pushing her, forcing her to realise what Hiroshi had meant. She resented Ramon altogether, his too-soft voice, his tight, hard face. Whenever Ramon was around, Hiroshi got tense, too, tight-mouthed, obsessed with all this stuff about the angels taking over. Now Ramon had got control over her too, forcing her to collude, to listen to the tape he’d made betraying people who trusted him.
To her dismay she found that she felt like crying. She had not cried for years. What was there to cry about?
Chatterji Uma’s sympathetic gaze was on her. “Hsing,” she said quietly, as the others began talking, “when Ramon showed me his notes, I told him to get out. Then I threw up all night.”
“But,” Hsing said. “But. But why would they do all this?” Her voice came out unmodulated, loud. The others turned.
Both Ramon and Hiroshi answered: “Power,” one said, the other said, “Control.”
She did not look at either of them. She looked at the Counselwoman, the woman, for an answer that made sense.
“Because—if I understand it—” Uma said, “Patel Inbliss has taught the angels that our destination is not a stopping place—not a place at all.”
Hsing stared. “You mean they think Shindychew doesn’t exist?”
“Nothing exists outside the ship. Nothing exists but the Voyage.”
Soul, Say What Death Is
“Rejoice in the voyage of life, from life, to life,
Life everlasting, bliss everlasting.
We are flying, O my angels, we will fly!”
ALL THE CELEBRANTS SANG OUT the last line, sweet and exultant, and Rosa turned to smile at Luis. They sat in a row, Luis, Rosa with her baby Jellika, her husband Ruiz Jen holding his two-year-old Joy on his lap. Angels were strong on what they called “whole families” and “true brotherhood,” couples who had and brought up both their children together. Mother sweet to cherish, Father strong to guide, little boy, little girl, growing side by side. Luis’s head was full of tags and rhymes and sayings. He had read almost nothing but angelic literature for the last four tendays. He had read The Angel to the Angels through twice, and Patel Inbliss’s New Commentaries three times, and many other texts; he had talked to angel friends and acquaintances, and listened much more than he talked. He had asked Rosa if he could come to Rejoicings with her, and she had of course told him happily that nothing could make her happier.
“I’m not going to become an angel, Rosie,” he said, “that’s not why I want to come,” but she laughed and took his hands—“Oh, you already are an angel, Luis. Don’t worry about that. I would just love to bring you into bliss!”
After the singing there was the Session in Peace, during which the celebrants sat in silence until one of them was moved to speak. Luis had come to look forward to these sessions. What was said was usually quite brief—a joy shared, or a fear or sorrow, in trustful expectation of sympathy. The first time he had come with Rosa, she stood up to say, “I am so glad because my dear friend Luis is here!” and people had turned and smiled at her and him. There were cut-and-dried speeches about thankfulness and remembering to be joyful, but often people spoke from the heart. Last meeting, an old man whose wife had died said, “I know Ada is flying in bliss, but I am lonely walking in the corridors without her. If you know how, please help me learn not to grieve her joy.”
Today people were shy of talking and said only conventional things, probably because an archangel was present. Archangels visited home or sectional Rejoicings to give brief talks or teachings. Some of them were singers who performed the songs called “devotionals,” to which the celebrants listened rapt. Luis had found these songs musically and intellectually rich and complex, and readied himself to listen with interest when the singer, 5-Van Wing, was introduced.
“I will sing a new song,” Wing said with angelic simplicity, paused, and began. His unaccompanied voice was a strong, sure tenor. He sang a devotional of a kind Luis had not heard before. The tune was a free, ecstatic outpouring, evidently largely ex tempore, built on a few linked patterns, but the words were at odds with the music; they were allusive, brief, obscure.
Eye, what do you see?
Blackness, the void.
Ear, what do you hear?
Silence, no voice.
Soul, say what death is?
Silent, black, outside.
Let life be purified!
Fly ever to rejoice,
O vehicle of bliss!
The last three lines rose in conventionally joyous cadences, but the song had lingered darkly on the words before them, repeating them many times, the singer imbuing them with a tremor of horror which Luis felt as strongly as the others.
It was a remarkable performance, and Van Wing was a real artist, he thought.
He recognised as he did so that he was defending himself against the song, trying to trivialise the effect those lines had had on him.
Soul, say what death is?
Silent, black, outside.
As he went back through the crowded corridors to his homespace in Four, the words kept singing their dark song in his head. When he woke next morning, he understood what they meant to him.
Sitting on his bed he began to write in a blank book Hsing had made for him as a birthday present when they were sixteen. Though he had always used it sparingly, over the years most of the pages had been covered top to bottom and edge to edge with his small clear handwriting. Only a few were left. The flyleaf was inscribed: “A Box to Hold Luis’s Mind. Made with Love by Hsing,” her name not in letters but in the ancient ideogram: . He read the inscription whenever he opened the book.
He wrote: “Life/ship/vehicle/passage: mortal means to immortality (true bliss). Destination metaphorical—for Destination read Destiny. All meaning is inside. Nothing is outside. Outside is nothing. Negation, nil, void: Death. Life is inside. To go outside is denial, is blasphemy.” He stared at the last word a while, then leaned over and brought up the OED on his innetscreen. He studied the definition and derivation of “blasphemy” for some time. He then looked up “heresy, heretic, heretical,” and then “orthodoxy,” which he quit abruptly to begin writing again in the blank book: “Hu. sp. highly ADAPTABLE! Bliss a psych./metaorganic adaptation to existence in transit—near-perfect homeostasis. Follow rules, live inside, live forever. Maladaptation to arrival. Arrival equated with phys./spir. DEATH.” He paused again, then wrote, “How to counteract, causing least possible argument, factionalism, distress?”
He stopped writing and sat for a long time thinking, brooding. The soft, steady, unvarying flow of air at 22° C from the atmosphere-intake of his sleepspace stirred the thin leaves of the book and laid them gently down to the right, revealing the flyleaf again. “A Box to Hold Lu
is’s Mind.” The word love. The ideogram that meant Hsing, that meant star. There really was nobody else to talk to.
She did not answer his first message, and when he got through to her she was busy, sorry, things are so busy just now, I just can’t get away from work. . . . She could not possibly have become self-important. Canaval was self-important, not without justification. But Hsing pompous, Hsing evasive? No. Busy. Why so busy? What kind of work kept one from answering a friend? Probably she was still afraid of him. That grieved him, but it was not a new grief. And since it was herself she feared, not him, it really was her problem, not his. So he insisted. He refused to be put off. “I will come tomorrow at ten,” and at ten he was at the door of her homespace. She was there; Canaval was not. She was brusque, awkward. They sat down facing each other on the biltin couch. “Is something wrong, Luis?”
“I need to tell you what I’ve learned about the angels.”
It was a strange thing to say after half a year of silence between them, he knew that; still, he found her response even stranger. She looked amazed, dismayed. She covered her shock, began to speak, stopped, and finally, with what seemed suspicion, said, “Why me?”
“Who else?”
“What do you think I have to do with anything to do with them?”
Circuitous! Luis thought. He said only, “Nothing. And that’s getting to be rare. This is important, and I need to talk it over with you. I want to know what you think about it. Your judgment. I’ve always thought best when I talked with you.”
She did not loosen up at all. Tense, wary, she nodded grudgingly. She said, “Do you want tea?”
“No, thank you. I’ll talk as fast as I can. Please interrupt if I’m not clear. Tell me if what I say is credible.”
“I don’t find much incredible lately,” she said, dry, not looking at him. “Go ahead, then. I do have to be on the Bridge at ten-forty. I’m sorry.”
“Half an hour will do.”
In half that time he told her what he had to tell. He began with his realisation that the education committees and councils had been controlled for at least twenty years by a large, steady majority of angels. It was now impossible to find what curriculum the Zero Generation had originally planned for the Sixth. Those plans had evidently been deleted—possibly even from the Archives.
Every time he considered that possibility it still shocked Luis, and he did not try to minimise his concern. Hsing continued to conceal any reaction she felt. He began to wonder if she already knew everything he was telling her. If so, she wasn’t admitting that either. He went on.
The elementary and high school curriculum had been scarcely altered since Hsing’s and Luis’s schooldays. The most striking change was a decrease in information and discussion concerning both Dichew and Shindychew. Children now in school spent very little time learning about the planets of origin and destination. Language concerning them was vague, with a curiously remote tone. In two recent texts Luis had found the phrase, “the planetary hypothesis.”
“But in 43.5 years we will arrive at one of these hypotheses,” Luis said. “What are we going to make of it?”
Hsing looked stricken again—frightened. He didn’t know what to make of that, either. He went on.
“I’ve been trying to understand the elements in angelic theory or belief that lead them to deny the importance—the fact—of our origin on one planet and our destination on another. Bliss is a coherent system of thought that makes almost perfect sense in itself and as a belief-system for people living as we live. In fact, that’s the problem. Bliss is a self-contained proposition, a closed system. It is a psychic adaptation to our life—ship life—an adaptation to a self-contained system, an unvarying artificial environment providing all necessities at all times. We of the middle generations have no goal except to stay alive and keep the ship running and on course, and to achieve it all we have to do is follow the rules—the Constitution. The Zeroes saw that as an important duty, a high obligation, because they saw it as an element of the whole voyage—the means glorified by the end. But for those who won’t see the end, there’s not much glory being the means. Self-preservation seems self-centered. The system’s not only closed, but stifling. That was Kim Terry’s vision—how to glorify the means, the voyage—how to make following the rules an end in itself. As he saw it, our true journey is not only to a material world outside in space, but also to a spiritual world of bliss—which we will attain, by living rightly here.”
Hsing nodded.
“Over the last decades Patel Inbliss has gradually changed the emphasis of this vision. Here is all. There’s nothing outside the ship—literally nothing, spiritually nothing. Origin and destination are now metaphors. They have no reality. Journey is the sole reality. The voyage is its own end.”
She was still impassive, as if he was telling her nothing she didn’t know; but she was alert.
“Patel isn’t a theorist. He’s an activist. Acting on his vision through his archangels and their disciples. I believe that in the last ten or fifteen years, angels have been making many of the decisions in Council, and most of the decisions about education.”
Again she nodded, but warily.
“The schools teach almost nothing about the original purpose of the interstellar voyage—to study and perhaps settle a planet. The texts and programs still have information about the cosmos—star-charts, stellar types, planet formation, all that stuff we had in Tenth—but I’ve been talking to teachers and they tell me they skip most of it. The children ‘aren’t interested,’ they ‘find these old material-science theories confusing.’ You realise that almost all school administrators and about 65 percent of the teachers—90 percent in Quad One—are members of Bliss?”
“So many?”
“At least that many. My impression is that some angels conceal their beliefs, deliberately, to keep their dominance from becoming too plain.”
Hsing looked uneasy, disgusted, but said nothing.
“Meanwhile in the archangelic teachings, ‘outside’ is equated with danger, physical and spiritual—sin, evil—and with death. Nothing else. There is nothing good outside the ship. Inside is positive, outside negative. Pure dualism.—Not many young angels are going into dermatology these days, but there are some older ones who do eva. As soon as they’re through the airlocks, they undergo a ritual of purification. Did you know that?”
“No,” she said.
“It’s called decontamination. An old material-science-theory word with a new meaning. The soul is contaminated by the silent black outside. . . . Well, that aside. Angels are eager to follow the rules, because our life lived well leads us directly to eternal happiness. They are eager for us all to follow the rules. We live in the Vehicle of Bliss. We can’t miss bliss. Unless we break the one new rule. The big one: The ship can’t stop.”
He stopped. Hsing looked angry, as she always did when she was worried, troubled, or scared.
His gradual discovery of the change in the angelic teachings and the extent of angelic control over various councils had alarmed but not frightened him. He had seen it as a problem, a serious problem, that must be addressed. The way to solve it was to bring it out into the open, forcing the angels to explain their policies and making the non-angels aware that Patel Inbliss was trying to change the rules, and exerting clandestine power to do so. When they saw that, they’d react against it. There need be no crisis.
“We’ve got 43.5 years,” he said. “Plenty of time to talk it over. It’s a matter of getting things back in proportion. The more radical angels will have to agree that we do have a destination, that people are going to do eva there, and that they’ll need to be trained to do eva, not to look on it as a sin.”
“It’s worse than that,” Hsing said. The tight, stricken look had come over her again. She jumped up and walked across the room—a neat, severe room, not like the messy nest she used to live in—and stood with her back to him.
“Well, yes,” Luis said, unsure what she meant,
but encouraged at her saying anything at all. “We all need training. We’ll be in our sixties at Arrival. If the planet’s habitable, we’ve got to get used to the idea of at least some of us living there—staying there. While maybe some of us turn around and head back to Dichew. . . . The angels never mention that, by the way. Inbliss seems to think only in a straight line extending to infinity. The flaw in his reasoning is that he assumes a material vehicle is capable of an eternal journey. Entropy does not seem to be part of Bliss.”
“Yes,” Hsing said.
“That’s all,” he said after a minute. He was puzzled and worried by her non-response. He waited a little and said, “I think this must be talked about. So I came to you. To talk about it. And you might want to talk about it to non-angelic people in Management and on the Bridge. They need to be concerned about this revision of our mission.” He paused. “Maybe they already are.”
“Yes,” she said again. She had not turned around.
Luis had very little anger in his temperament and was not given to fits of pique, but he felt let down flat. As he looked at Hsing’s back, her pink cheongsam, her short-legs-no-butt (so she had described her Chi-An figure), her black hair falling bright and straight and cut off sharp at the shoulder, he also felt pain. A hard, deep, sore pain at the heart.
“There was a flaw in my reasoning too,” he said. He stood up.
She turned around. She still looked worried beyond anything he had expected. It had taken him a long time to realise how powerful angelic thinking had become, and he had dumped all his discoveries on her at once—yet none of it had seemed to surprise her. So why this reaction? And why wouldn’t she talk about it?
“What flaw?” she asked, but still distrustful, holding back.
“Nothing. I miss talking with you.”
“I know. The work in Nav, it seems like it never lets up.”
She was looking at him but not looking at him. He couldn’t stand it.
“So. That’s it. Just sharing my worries, as we say in Peace Session. Thanks for the time.”
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